France’s Fabius hopes powers, Iran can move towards nuclear deal by Sunday

Iran and the six powers are trying to reach a deal by next week that would: set controls on work allowed at Iran’s nuclear facilities; impose strict IAEA inspections; and force the country to start cooperating on the weapons probe, all in return for sanctions relief.

Amano is scheduled to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani later in the day.

“As negotiations continue, Congress stands ready to stand up for core USA national security interests – and against a bad deal with Iran“, he said.

“What Iran wants is an agreement that’s fair, that respects Iran’s sovereignty, that respects Iran’s dignity”, said Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University.

Richard Nephew, who served as a USA negotiator in the talks until February and is now the head of the economic statecraft program at Columbia University, told us that he didn’t expect that large sections of the agreement would be secret, but he anticipated that there would be some interpretations of the text that the administration would share only with Congress.

The prospect of an attack on Iran hovers over debate about what the US should do if a solid agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program can’t be reached. IAEA inspectors will be empowered to make short-notice visits to those sites, where they can make visual inspections as well as collect soil and radiation samples that could offer telltale clues to furtive Iranian activities.

One key weakness in the current nonproliferation regime lets countries indefinitely suspend access to suspicious sites by extending negotiations with the IAEA.

“The work goes on”.

Even as Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has defiantly rejected such access, USA officials have sought to differentiate between what Iranian officials were saying is for domestic consumption and what they were promising in the negotiating room.

“Things have advanced but we have not yet reached the end”, Fabius told reporters, adding he planned to “return Sunday evening”. Rather, he said, there’s “going to have to be a serious, rigorous verification mechanism”. There were suggestions, but no confirmation, that he might go back to the Iranian capital again later in the week.

While Iran has reduced the amount of enriched uranium gas in its stockpiles, it has failed to dispose of these materials in a way that satisfies the requirements of the nuclear accord struck with the United States and other powers in 2013.

Russian Federation has not announced any plans for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to join the talks on Thursday.

There were few public signs of progress as the high-level negotiations entered a sixth day Thursday after diplomats blew through a June 30 deadline and extended an interim accord by a week.

Iran’s active cooperation with global institutions within the framework of its obligations and conventional legal procedures is at the core of its principles, Shamkhani said, according to the official IRNA news agency.

“Not at breakthrough moment yet”, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond tweeted.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will attend the Iran nuclear talks now taking place in Vienna, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

The deputy foreign minister noted that Iran insists on sanctions removal as soon as a nuclear deal is implemented. “There are small and big obstacles, and we are working on removing these”, said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.