Kerry and President Obama are keen to see the deal finalized as a major credit to the administration’s foreign policy credentials, but as CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan reports, no one has a more personal stake in the negotiations than the four Americans presently imprisoned or missing in Iran.
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Zarif went in immediately to talk to USA Secretary of State John Kerry, still bearing the marks of his last round of talks with the Iranian diplomat in Geneva, after which Kerry went riding on his bike and broke his leg. He is still in a cast. USA Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman was present in one round of these talks. But the senior official was cautious, speaking on condition of anonymity because officials are not authorized to discuss the closed-door negotiations by name.
“We still don’t know yet whether we will be able to get there”, he said.
Negotiations with Iran over nuclear capability have been extended to July 7, a USA State Department official said Tuesday.
“If we were going to cave, I could be home already and I’d be a really happy person”.
The peaceful gathering numbered around 200 men and women and participants said their aim was to support Iran’s negotiating team in Vienna. Iran’s official IRNA news agency said he would be accompanied by his country’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, as well as President Hassan Rouhani’s brother and close confidante, Hossein Fereydoun. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russian Federation is also expected to arrive in Vienna.
Earnest downplayed the delayed deadline, noting that earlier this year the parties worked on the framework of an agreement and set a March 31 deadline – yet didn’t actually produce that framework until April 2. The goal is to curb Iran’s nuclear program for a decade, in exchange for tens of billions of dollars in relief from global economic sanctions.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged that Tuesday’s deadline for a deal can be missed, saying “there are nonetheless some necessary unresolved points”.
Gathered around conference tables in Vienna, diplomats are working feverishly to hammer out the terms of a long-elusive nuclear deal with Iran. Specialists now estimate it would take two to three months for Iran to build a bomb.
Iran says it will not allow the United Nations inspectors to visit their military sites and talk to the scientists there.
The talks are believed to have stuck on a key point: how much access Iran will grant to nuclear monitors to convince the global community that it was not developing atomic weapons. In order to make those conclusions about the present and the future, however, the agency will need access to individuals and sites that were used for military purposes in the past.
The sticking factors could not be “resolved within the subsequent 36 hours”.
What appears to be emerging is a phased approach, where certain sanctions are removed nearly simultaneously to Iran falling into compliance.
In return, the powers have stated they’ll progressively ease sanctions which have suffocated Iran’s financial system, whereas retaining the choice to reimpose them if Iran violates the settlement.
Negotiators are now focused on completing the deal before July 9.
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If an agreement is clinched before then, Congress will have 30 days to review it. But if a deal is hammered out after that date, the review period for lawmakers would stretch to 60 days and officials worry that opponents could have enough time to rally opposition to the accord.
