Agencies/Vienna
World powers and Iran began discussing late yesterday whether more time is needed to reach a nuclear deal, a US official said, as they struggled to overcome major gaps barely 24 hours before a deadline.
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany (the P5+1) have been locked in talks with Iran for months to turn an interim deal struck in Geneva that expires today into a lasting accord.
Such an agreement, after a 12-year standoff, is aimed at easing fears that Tehran will develop nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian activities, an ambition it hotly denies.
But a last-ditch diplomatic blitz in Vienna this week to secure a deal appeared to be unable to bridge major differences, forcing negotiators to question whether more time is a better option.
“Our focus remains on taking steps forward toward an agreement, but it is only natural that just over 24 hours from the deadline we are discussing a range of options both internally and with our P5+1 partners,” a senior US State Department official said.
“An extension is one of those options. It should come as no surprise that we are also engaged in a discussion of the options with the Iranians,” added the official.
“This does not mean that we are not continuing to discuss the broad range of difficult issues and working to make progress on all the issues that need to be part of a comprehensive agreement.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry met Iranian counterpart Mohamed Javad Zarif yesterday for the sixth time since Thursday in an attempt to break the deadlock. Neither commented publicly afterwards.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a key player who arrived yesterday afternoon, also met both Zarif and Kerry separately as well as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Britain and France’s ministers had also arrived in Vienna while their Chinese counterpart was due early today.
“What a deal would do is take a big piece of business off the table and perhaps begin a long process in which the relationship not just between Iran and us but the relationship between Iran and the world, and the region, begins to change,” US President Barack Obama in an ABC News interview aired yesterday.
Diplomats on both sides say that the two sides remain far apart on the two crucial points of contention: uranium enrichment and sanctions relief.
Enriching uranium renders it suitable for peaceful purposes like nuclear power but also at high purities for the fissile core of a nuclear weapon.
Tehran wants to massively ramp up the number of enrichment centrifuges—in order, it says, to make fuel for future reactors—while the West wants them dramatically reduced.
Iran wants painful UN and Western sanctions that have strangled its vital oil exports lifted, but the powers want to stagger any relief over a long period of time to ensure Iranian compliance with any deal.
In view of the difficulties—and of the dangers posed by a complete collapse—many experts have long believed that the negotiators would put more time on the clock.
An Iranian source said earlier yesterday, while stressing at that point that adding time was not yet on the table, that the extension “could be for a period of six months or a year”.
Another extension - as happened with an earlier deadline of July 20 - carries risks of its own including possible fresh US sanctions that could lead Iran to walk away.
Arms Control Association analyst Kelsey Davenport said that an extension of six months to a year “would not fly” with the other parties.
Any extension “will have to be very short because there are too many hardliners, particularly in Washington and Tehran, that want to sabotage this deal”, she said.
Last year’s negotiations opened secret talks between Tehran and Washington, which have transformed relations between two countries whose deep enmity has been one of the central facts of the Middle East since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
This year, the United States and Iran have found themselves on the same side on the battlefield against Islamic State militants, especially in Iraq where both Washington and Tehran provide military support to the Baghdad government.
But without a nuclear deal, two countries that have labelled each other the “Great Satan” and a member of the “axis of evil” are destined to remain enemies.
Sanctions, tightened sharply since 2010, are inflicting severe damage to Iran’s economy, while the United States and Israel have said they reserve the right to use force to destroy any Iranian nuclear bomb programme.
Both US President Barack Obama, a centre-left Democrat, and Iranian President Hassan Rohani, a Shia cleric elected on a pledge to reduce Iran’s isolation and improve the economy, would have to sell any deal to sceptical hardliners at home.
Washington would also have to win acceptance from Israel and Saudi Arabia. Kerry briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone on Saturday and Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal in person at the Vienna airport yesterday.
“Iran must not be allowed to set itself up as a nuclear threshold state,” Netanyahu said about his conversation. “There is no reason for it to retain thousands of centrifuges which would allow it to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb in a short period of time.”
Kerry and Zarif shake hands prior to their meeting at the Palais Coburg in Vienna yesterday.
