Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the deal would allow Iran to make “many nuclear bombs and gives it hundreds of billions of dollars for its terrorism and conquest machine”.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry at the talks venue.
“I hope we are finally entering the final phase of these marathon negotiations”. German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius are both in Vienna.
Two or three key questions remained, however, including how long any agreement should last, and over the lifting of global sanctions on Iran such as a United Nations arms embargo, the source added.
The Iranian official said whether or not a deal gets struck hinges on the negotiators’ appetite for getting it done. “This is a 100 page document, after all”, Iranian Foreign Ministry official Alireza Miryousefi tweeted, citing a senior Iranian official.
“Ninety-eight per cent of the text is finished”, said a source close to the discussions, after a flurry of bilateral and multilateral meetings throughout Saturday.
Tehran: Iran’s supreme leader Saturday again denounced what he called the “arrogance” of arch-foe the United States, and said the battle against it would continue, his English-language Twitter account showed.
“Thank God, I have kept my campaign promises for a settlement of the nuclear issue”, Rouhani said, referring to pledges made during his presidential campaign.
Experts and senior officials from Iran, the United States and the other powers have been meeting non-stop for months, often working into the early hours of the morning, to finalize an accord that will include five technical annexes.
Kerry and Zarif have met almost every day since Kerry arrived in Vienna more than two weeks ago for what was meant to be the final phase in a negotiation process that began with an interim nuclear deal clinched in November 2013. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reported that deputy police chief Brigadier General Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi said the authorities were fully prepared for such celebrations. The mood among negotiators had turned more somber each time a new target date – first July 7, then July 10 and then July 13 – was set.
Now, he said, the ball is in the court of Democratic lawmakers who have to decide whether to support President Barack Obama as he seeks to secure Congressional approval, or to join the vocal Republican opposition to an agreement.
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“We have gone from preventing Iran having a nuclear ability, to managing it”, said Sen.
