Nuclear talks on the edge
The latest round of talks have been led by the US secretary of state and his Iranian counterpart.
The end of the year-and-a-half-long negotiations was tantalisingly close, with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani even posting a tweet hailing the “victory” late yesterday only to delete it soon after.
Instead, Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif told reporters from his room’s balcony at the historic Coburg hotel in Vienna where the talks are taking place that a final deal being reached by today was “possible”.
John Kerry met with Mr Zarif for about an hour yesterday, after meeting foreign ministers from all of the other countries negotiating with Iran – France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and China.
The ministers who only a day before had hinted at the talks’ conclusion, refused to answer questions about whether or not there would be another deadline extension.
There appeared to be at least three sticking points hampering a final agreement, which is aimed at limiting Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions that have crippled its economy.
The first issue is the Iranian demand, reportedly backed by Russia and China, that the United Nations Security Council embargo on its ballistic missile programme be fully and immediately lifted. The ban is part of the nuclear-related sanctions imposed since 2006.
Russia has deals in place to sell Iran missile systems and its negotiators have backed Tehran on this point.
Western powers involved in the talks have reportedly insisted that the embargo remain in place, at least in the short term.
The US and its allies in the Arabian Gulf fear that Tehran will use the tens of billions of dollars unlocked with the lifting of economic sanctions to rebuild its outdated conventional forces, bolster its vast ballistic missile programme, and increase funding to allied state and non-state groups across the Middle East.
Another issue that has tripped up the final accord is the demand that Iran give full access to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors at nuclear sites, including military ones, suspected of housing nuclear weapons research facilities.
Iran denies that it has conducted weapons research and maintains that military facilities and nuclear scientists should be out of bounds.
Iranian negotiators are also reportedly demanding that the Security Council resolution required to back the deal and lift the UN sanctions does not include language describing Tehran’s nuclear programme as illegal. The pace and sequence of sanctions relief and the unfreezing of Iranian assets has also apparently not been settled.
Despite the signs of optimism over the weekend, there was no indication yesterday that either US or Iranian officials were willing to compromise on these key issues. When asked if the US would agree to the end of the arms embargo on Iran, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the only sanctions under consideration related to Tehran’s nuclear programme. He did not specify if he was referring to the UN weapons sanctions, which are tied to the nuclear programme, or other US sanctions.
“They have made genuine progress but there continues to be some sticking points,” Mr Earnest said. More mundane challenges are also prolonging the negotiations, according to diplomats.
The latest draft agreement is about 100 pages long and includes a number of highly technical annexes, all of which must be translated into Farsi and checked by both sides to make sure the translations match exactly.
The final draft must then be given a green light by both the White House and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei.
The failure to reach the July 9 deadline also ensured that a US congress, with deep reservations over the deal, will be given two months to debate the accord and do its best to publicly undermine it.