Iran Nuclear Deal Expected Monday

The European and Chinese foreign ministers have come and gone over the course of the talks and even their Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, left for a day, but John Kerry remained in Vienna throughout.

Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program appeared Sunday to be on the cusp of an historic agreement that would place limits on Tehran’s atomic work in exchange for relief from crippling sanctions.

To stress the wrongheaded nature of the agreement, Netanyahu played a 57-second video of ex- United States president Bill Clinton announcing the signing of a nuclear agreement with North Korea on October 31, 1994.

DURATION – If there is a deal, Iranian negotiators agreed in Lausanne that Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme will be subject to limitations for a period of 15 years, easing gradually after 10.

Having missed a Friday morning US congressional deadline, US and officials said they were extending sanctions relief for Iran under an interim deal through Monday to provide more time for talks on a final deal. But they cautioned that final details of the pact were still being worked out.

Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister, cancelled a planned trip to Central African Republic and Ethiopia due to the continued deadlock in the Iran negotiations, a French diplomatic source said.

His remarks were in response to Iran’s supreme leader saying Saturday that the United States was the embodiment of global arrogance and that Iranians would continue to fight it even if a nuclear agreement is reached.

“I hope that we are finally entering the last phase of this negotiation”, Fabius said outside the Coburg Palace hotel, where the talks were held.

Both have faced opposition from hardliners at home, as well as from Iran’s arch-foe Israel, believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state, although it has never confirmed it.

“I think it’s going to be a very hard sell, if it’s completed, in Congress“, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Fox News Sunday broadcast.

The senior USA official declined to speculate as to the timing of any agreement or announcement but said “major issues remain to be resolved”.

The diplomat said talks “should be finished by tomorrow”.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency-the equivalent of the FBI-in late June issued a detailed report on Iran’s wide-ranging activities to obtain illicit technology for its nuclear and missiles program. “But a few issues remain that need to be resolved by foreign ministers”.

Experts from Iran, the US and the other powers have been meeting for months, often into the early hours, to finalise a deal.

As stated by IRNA, unnamed sources in the German delegation said that a final nuclear deal was within reach, but it was “not quite finalized yet”, adding: “all outstanding questions are resolvable”.

His main concern, Corker said, was that Iran would “cheat by inches”, avoiding any violations that would trigger renewed economic sanctions, but still progressing toward a nuclear weapon.

The nuclear standoff between Iran and the West goes back to at least 2002, when a group of Iranian exiles revealed undeclared Iranian nuclear facilities in Iran.