US Secretary of State John Kerry, British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, EU Secretary General for the External Action Service, Helga Schmid, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif and Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, meet at the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna yesterday.
Agencies/Vienna
Marathon Iran nuclear talks appeared to be stumbling yesterday as foreign ministers grappled to resolve the last hurdles blocking a deal, amid warnings that years of negotiations may fail at the 11th hour.
Foreign ministers from the global powers leading the talks to rein in Iran’s suspect nuclear programme huddled for the first time with the Iranian delegation during this 10-day stretch of talks in Vienna.
But even though it seems that the teams are really down to the last few sticking points aiming to end a 13-year standoff with Iran, a German diplomatic source sounded a cautious note.
“We are not there yet... We should not underestimate that important questions remain unresolved. There will not be an agreement at any price,” the source said.
“If there is no movement in decisive areas a failure is not ruled out.”
After failing to make a June 30 deadline, global powers have given themselves until today to try to reach an accord putting a nuclear bomb out of Iran’s reach.
But an Iranian official admitted today’s date was not sacrosanct.
He insisted his country had made “a number of concessions” but that a number of issues—few in number but “tough”—remained to be thrashed out at ministerial level.
“July 7, July 8, we do not consider these dates as those dates we have to finish our job,” the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters.
“Even if we pass July 9, that will not be the end of the world, there will be another period for us to watch.”
On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry, in the Austrian capital since June 27 facing off against his Iranian counterpart Mohamed Javad Zarif, warned the talks still “could go either way”.
The point was rammed home by France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini as they returned to Vienna late Sunday.
“The main question is to know whether the Iranians will accept making clear commitments on what until now has not been clarified,” Fabius said, adding that “all the cards” were “now on the table”.
Kerry is under pressure to nail down the deal by Thursday in order to send it to the Republican-controlled US Congress for a 30-day review. Under a new law, if the deal is reached after July 9 US lawmakers will have 60 days to vote on it.
The so-called P5+1 group—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States—wants Iran to sharply curb its nuclear programme to make any push to acquire the atomic bomb all but impossible, in return for sanctions relief.
Iran denies wanting nuclear weapons, saying its activities are purely for peaceful purposes.
The deal, capping almost two years of rollercoaster talks following the 2013 election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, would build on a framework accord reached in April in Switzerland.
A final deal could also put Iran and the United States on the road to normalised relations after 35 years of enmity and mistrust.
Signs have emerged that some of the outstanding issues have been resolved by teams of experts, who are now waiting for the ministers to sign off on their months of behind-the-scenes work.
But the same tough issues that remain have bedevilled the talks since the start.
These include investigating allegations that in the past Iran sought nuclear weapons, finding a mechanism to lift the sanctions, and ensuring Iran can continue to have a modest, peaceful nuclear programme.
Also holding up a deal are disputes over UN sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme and a broader arms embargo.
“The Iranians want the ballistic missile sanctions lifted. They say there is no reason to connect it with the nuclear issue, a view that is difficult to accept,” one Western official said. “There’s no appetite for that on our part.”
Iranian and other Western officials confirmed this view.
“The Western side insists that not only should it (Iran’s ballistic missile programme) remain under sanctions, but that Iran should suspend its programme as well,” an Iranian official said.
“But Iran is insisting on its rights and says all the sanctions, including on the ballistic missiles, should be lifted when the UN sanctions are lifted.”
Separately, a senior Iranian official told reporters in Vienna on condition of anonymity that Tehran wanted a UN arms embargo terminated as well. A senior Western diplomat said a removal was “out of the question”.
A deal could reduce the chance of any military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, something Washington has refused to rule out, and the possibility of a wider war in the Middle East, where conflicts already rage in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Iranian leaders have warned that Iran would respond to any attack by targeting US interests and Israel.
“Israel is a fake temporary state. It’s a foreign object in the body of a nation and it will be erased soon,” the state news agency Irna quoted former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying.
Iran refuses to recognise Israel, which is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power and has repeatedly described Iran’s nuclear programme as a threat to its existence.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the deal would “pave Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal”.
“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.
If there is a nuclear deal, it will include a draft UN Security Council resolution that, once adopted, would terminate all UN nuclear-related sanctions while simultaneously re-imposing other existing restrictions on Iran.
The six powers argue that removing those measures could further destabilise the region.
