Top ministers were due to meet yesterday seeking to conclude an unprecedented nuclear deal with Iran, on the eve of a deadline aiming to draw the curtain on almost two years of high-stakes negotiations.
After crisscrossing the world since September 2013 chasing a complex accord to cut off Iran’s pathways to developing nuclear arms, exhausted world powers warned Tehran now was the time to strike an accord or walk away.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif four times on Sunday, said that at the 11th hour the talks still “could go either way.”
Photo: Reuters
“All the cards are on the table,” French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius said as he arrived back in Vienna.
There is no appetite to extend the talks once again after a series of missed deadlines, especially since the broad outlines of the deal were already hammered out in April.
If all sides were prepared to make hard choices, then “we could get an agreement this week. But if they are not made, we will not,” Kerry said, adding that if there was “absolute intransigence” the US would walk away.
“The main question is to know whether the Iranians will accept making clear commitments on what until now has not been clarified,” Fabius said.
The global powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US— are trying to pin down a deal putting a nuclear bomb out of Iran’s reach in return for lifting a web of sanctions against the Islamic republic.
Some of the hardest issues still left have hobbled the talks since the start — probing claims that Iran sought nuclear weapons, finding a mechanism to lift sanctions, and ensuring that Iran can continue to have nuclear energy without the capacity to build a bomb.
“The time is now... We are very close,” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said, adding the atmosphere was “constructive, positive.”
“I see the political will ... now it is a matter of seeing all together if this political will manages to translate into political decisions,” the EU official added.
German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier flew back into the Austrian capital late on Sunday, along with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov. There was no confirmation when their Chinese and British counterparts were due, although they were expected to arrive yesterday.
Signs were emerging that some of the issues had been resolved by teams of experts who were now waiting for the ministers to sign off on their months of behind-the-scenes work.
In another indication of a breakthrough senior officials from the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were flying to Tehran for talks.
After talks in Iran last week, IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said that by the end of the year the agency could complete a stalled probe into allegations that before 2003, and possibly since, Iran had sought to develop nuclear weapons.
A deal also holds out the prospect of bringing Iran back into the diplomatic fold, amid a myriad of global challenges and conflict.
Zarif said in an English message on YouTube that an accord could “open new horizons to address important common challenges,” denouncing the “growing menace of violent extremism and outright barbarism” in an reference to the Islamic State group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
“I think it would be very difficult to imagine secretary Kerry at this point walking away, this close to the finish line,” Iran expert Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution told reporters. “I just don’t think there’s any real likelihood that this collapses.”
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