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Global powers leading negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran in Vienna have a “few last” but “tough” issues left to resolve, an Iranian official said on Monday, on the eve of a final deadline.
The deal is now being negotiated by USA Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. In the winter the IAEA would provide a face-saving way for the parties to declare Iran is cooperating – IAEA head Amano said earlier this week that the agency could wrap up by the end of the year if Iran cooperates – and then deal would officially begin.
Talks are taking place in Vienna between Tehran and major powers.
“The comprehensive agreement is within reach”, Wang told reporters as he entered the discussions.
Most likely: there will be a non-agreement agreement.
The agency is still trying to get Iran to hand over additional documents and information that would shed light on the past military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, which the country has insisted has always been peaceful. Russian Federation and China may be sympathetic, but the USA and its European allies argue that such a step would only increase Iran’s ability to cause trouble, whether through its support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, for the Houthi rebels in Yemen, or for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, the latter both radical groups that are sworn foes of Israel.
He compared the future deal to negotiations between USA and North Korea which failed to yield the expected results as the rogue Asian state finally acquired nuclear arms.
But Iran also sees existing United Nations resolutions imposed on Iran’s nuclear program and the accompanying sanctions as unjust and illegal.
Among the most contentious issues are the pace of sanctions relief and the lifetime of the “snap-back” mechanism to reimpose sanctions should an accord be violated, said a six-power official at the talks, asking not to be named.
The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, Britain, France, Russian Federation and China, plus Germany went into Monday’s meeting on the eve of a final deadline for reaching an agreement with no guarantee that they would be successful. All seven were either in Vienna or arriving by day’s end.
Even with the added diplomatic muscle, it was unclear if there would be a pact.
In a line echoing the memoir title of his predecessor Hillary Clinton, on Sunday Kerry said “hard choices” could help lead to a deal, but the negotiations “could go either way.”
0% chance: Kerry might make good on the comments that he made yesterday to reporters, and walks away from a bad deal.
This sudden introduction of new elements into talks may be a repeat of a familiar Iranian negotiating ploy, of 11th-hour demands.
The diplomats have expressed a mix of progress and the need to finalize key unresolved issues in their bid to limit Iran’s nuclear activity in return for needed sanctions relief.
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It is of crucial importance that Iran has said: “‘OK, we are going to trust the west.’ If we reach an agreement with the U.S. – the Great Satan – on an issue that divided us for more than a decade, it will be a huge transformation”.
