The United States and its five negotiating partners have been pushing for a formal signed "framework" agreement in nuclear negotiations with Iran, but Iran appears to be resisting a written accord, preferring instead an informal "understanding" for the time being,
The New York Times reported.
With just one week left until the deadline, if the Iranians prevail, the Obama administration would find itself in the difficult position of having to explain the accord without a written deal.
Iran is looking to avoid codifying specifics until the final deal in June, the Times said.
"This is one of the biggest challenges we face," one European diplomat involved in the talks said in recent days, according to the Times. "The politics in America demand specificity, and an Iranian commitment. And the politics in Iran demand vagueness" at this stage of the negotiations.
The diplomat added: "All of us are in agreement that you don't make oral deals with Iran."
If a written deal isn't reached by the March deadline, U.S. congressional lawmakers are likely to take that as a sign that Iran is deliberately delaying the deal, potentially justifying an increase in sanctions to ratchet up the pressure.
At the same time, Iran's top negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, has suggested that a deal outlining Iranian compromises would be difficult to sell at home because hardliners could use it to scuttle a final deal.
"We forget that the Iranians have politics, too," one German official told the Times. "And theirs are at least as complicated as Obama's."
An American official admitted that it is unclear whether Iran will sign anything by the deadline Tuesday, but that the U.S. and its allies would be "making clear with as much specificity as possible what's been agreed to." The official added that "beyond that, we really have no idea" and that much of the agreement would be left to the technical annexes, the Times reported.
Secretary of State John Kerry had envisioned in November that there would be a deal completed in March with a more detailed technical agreement nailed down in June. At the time, Iranian negotiators seemed to agree to that timeline but in early February Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said there would be just one agreement.
The parameters of any deal come down to the technical agreements about the number of centrifuges, the size of Iran's stockpiles of enriched uranium, and the type and number of advanced centrifuges Iran is allowed to develop, the Times said.
"I think if there is some agreement, I don't see how it could be meaningful without having some quantitative dimensions," the American official said. "Otherwise, it's not an executable program."
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