Iran and six world powers relaunched talks on Tuesday to try to salvage a deal on Tehran’s nuclear activity before a deadline next month, striving to prevent a long-time standoff from descending into a wider Middle East war.
With time running short if a risky extension of the nuclear talks is to be avoided, negotiators face formidable challenges to bridge gaps in positions over the future scope of Iran’s nuclear program in less than five weeks.
The talks, coordinated by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, stumbled during the last round in the middle of last month, when diplomats had hoped to start drafting the text of a future agreement. Each side accused the other of lacking realism in their demands and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the negotiations had “hit a wall.”
Although such rhetoric may in part be a negotiating tactic, it also underlines how far the parties are from resolving a dispute that could unleash war in the region. Israel sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat and has in the past suggested it could carry out air strikes on its installations.
There was little indication whether the parties had moved toward overcoming the deadlock in their initial session on Tuesday. A spokesman for Ashton said only that talks focused on “elements of text that could be part of the final agreement.”
“We are certainly very realistic,” Michael Mann told reporters. “And we hope the Iranian side is as well... I think things are moving forward.”
Talks are scheduled to last until tomorrow and resume some time next month before the July 20 deadline.
The six powers’ overarching goal is to force Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program, denying it any capability to move quickly to production of a nuclear bomb.
Iran denies any such ambition and demands that crippling economic sanctions, eased slightly in recent months, be lifted as part of any settlement, something that western governments are loath to do too soon.
The parties must also resolve other complex issues, including the extent of UN nuclear watchdog monitoring of Iranian nuclear sites, how long any agreement should run and the future of Iran’s planned Arak research reactor, a potential source of plutonium for atomic bombs.
“We don’t have illusions about how hard it will be to close those gaps, though we do see ways to do so,” a senior US official said on Monday, signaling the pace of diplomacy would intensify in the days and weeks ahead.
However, sounding a cautiously hopeful note after a bilateral US-Iranian meeting in Geneva last week, the official said that “we are engaged in a way that makes it possible to see how we could reach an agreement,” without elaborating.
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said: “If the other parties enter in negotiations with realistic views, the possibility of a final agreement exists. But if they act irrationally, we will act in accordance to our national rights.”
Zarif, Ashton and the US delegation, led by US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and including US Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, held trilateral talks on Monday before the start of formal negotiations on Tuesday.
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