Officials of the world powers and European Union with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Iran’s ambassador to IAEA Ali Akbar Salehi during a meeting in Vienna.
Advertisement
Officials from the six powers negotiating with Iran said that while differences have continued to narrow, agreement wasn’t assured by the time their latest deadline expires at midnight on July 7.
Iran also wants a snap-back mechanism that will allow it to revive uranium enrichment if it doesn’t receive the full sanctions relief it was promised, according to a transcript of an Iranian briefing to journalists on Monday.
Parties to nuclear negotiations in Vienna said during the weekend they were committed to reaching a deal, though there are hard issues ahead. “There’s no appetite for that on our part”.
“Our expectation is that sanctions relief will go into bolstering the Iranian economy and not into supporting all these other activities, which as I pointed out, are being supported anyway”, he said.
Six in ten Americans (59 percent) favor the framework of an agreement with Iran.
Iran’s main opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), last month published a 28-page report stating that Iran has been trying to keep its nuclear infrastructure intact and retain the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. We should not underestimate that important questions remain unresolved.
The Iranian official spoke of good progress on some issues.
But disagreements persisted as the sides moved close to the new Tuesday deadline, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest said another extension was “certainly possible”. The 28-page analysis, relying on public and classified sources within Iran, reviews Iran’s behavior during two periods of talks (2003-2004 and 2013-2015) and discerns the principles of Tehran’s approach and tactics during negotiations to reach its objectives.
The public rates the possibility of unfriendly countries becoming nuclear powers (59 percent) and specifically Iran’s nuclear program (57 percent) among the seven most critical threats facing the United States.
Since the April deal, Iran has sent mixed messages on how much access inspectors would get to suspected nuclear sites around the country.
“It will give them a jackpot of hundreds of billions of dollars with which to continue to fund their aggression and terror – aggression in the region, terror throughout the world”, he told reporters in Jerusalem.
But Iran also sees existing United Nations resolutions imposed on Iran’s nuclear programme and the accompanying sanctions as unjust and illegal.
“Intense work is going on to try and conclude by the deadline”, a senior Western diplomat said, referring to Tuesday.
Advertisement
“What will be ultimately decisive is the level of intensity that members of Congress feel, particularly Democrats”, said Creamer.
