Iran-P5+1 nuclear talks enter endgame

We are ready to strike a balanced and good deal and open new horizons to address important common challenges, said Iran Foreign Minister.

a deal was close.

“We are ready to strike a balanced and good deal and open new horizons to address important common challenges,” he said in a statement broadcast on YouTube, referring to the rise of Islamist militancy.

“We have never been closer to a lasting outcome.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry said there was more work to be done but parties were making an effort.

“We are making progress,” Kerry said.

All sides say a deal is within reach. US, European and Iranian officials, including US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Iranian deputy foreign ministers Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takhteravanchi, held a sixhour negotiating session that ended at 3 am on Friday, a senior US official said.

Russia’s chief negotiator Sergei Ryabkov said the text of the agreement was more than 90% complete. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi voiced confidence that the parties would reach a mutually acceptable accord.

The negotiators missed a 30 June deadline for a final agreement, but have given themselves until 7 July, and Foreign Ministers not already in Vienna are due to return on Sunday for a final push. “Then ... we are really in the end game of all of this,” said a second senior US official, saying it was conceivable the talks could run past 7 July if they were on the verge of a final agreement.

A deal, if agreed, would require Iran to severely curtail uranium enrichment work for more than a decade to ensure it would need at least one year’s “breakout time” to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single weapon, compared with current estimates of two to three months. Western and Iranian officials said there were signs of a compromise emerging on one of the major sticking points: access to Iranian sites to monitor compliance with a future agreement.

Another potential compromise emerging relates to Iran’s low enriched uranium stockpiles. Western and Iranian diplomats said Tehran was considering shipping most of the stockpile out of the country, something Tehran had previously ruled out. A senior Iranian official in Vienna said on Thursday that Iran would sign up to an IAEA inspection regime called the Additional Protocol, which would be provisionally implemented at the start of a deal and later ratified by Iran’s Parliament.

The Protocol allows IAEA inspectors increased access to sites where they suspect nuclear activity is taking place, but US officials say it is insufficient because Iran has in the past stalled by dragging out negotiations over access requests.

The Iranian official said Iran could also agree to a system of “managed access” — which is strictly limited to protect legitimate military or industrial secrets — to relevant military sites.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the power to block a deal, last week ruled out either a long freeze of sensitive nuclear work or opening military sites to inspectors.

A Western diplomat told Reuters: “The positions set out by Khamenei last week make it more difficult to bridge the gaps in the next few days, and there is still work to be done.”