Negotiators closer to Iran nuclear agreement

After failing to make a June 30 deadline, global powers have given themselves until Tuesday to try to reach an accord putting a nuclear bomb out of Iran’s reach. Foreign ministers from major powers began crunch talks in Vienna on Monday seeking to seal a historic nuclear deal to end a 13-year standoff, one day before a final deadline, officials said.

“If hard choices are made this week we can get an agreement”, Kerry also said.

Kerry added that “if we don’t get a deal, if we don’t have a deal, if there’s absolute intransigence, if there’s an unwillingness to move on the things that are important, President Obama has always said we’ll be prepared to walk away”.

But after meeting his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif three times on Sunday, the top United States diplomat said the talks “could go either way”.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini says Iran has to give some ground.

“I think that a nuclear agreement with Iran is very close”, Harris said.

Sticking points are still reported to be how sanctions are lifted and the amount of nuclear capability Iran is allowed to keep.

Still, the word of significant progress indicated the sides were moving closer to a comprehensive accord that would set a decade of restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for tens of billions of dollars’ in economic benefits for the Iranians. “We want to get an agreement”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the deal being formulated with Iran is worse than the failed agreement with North Korea, which led to a nuclear arsenal there.

But in its annual report in April, the panel said it had received no formal notifications from United Nations member states of Iranian breaches of sanctions, and suggested this may be because countries were trying to avoid damaging nuclear talks.

Kerry’s statements followed the release Friday of a YouTube video by Zarif, who said the two sides were closer than ever to a deal.

But the talks appeared to be deadlocked over several key issues, making an agreement in time for Tuesday’s deadline unlikely.

Iran, the official said, had already “made a number of concessions, we have shown a good amount of flexibility”.

“Two delegations from the IAEA will arrive in Tehran to discuss details of what was agreed during the IAEA chief’s visit to Iran”, Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, told Iran’s Students News Agency ISNA.

2009 – USA President Barack Obama takes office and, in his first week in the White House, tells Iran’s leaders he would extend a hand if they would “unclench their fist” and persuade the West they were not trying to build a nuclear bomb.

That’s why Khamenei’s recent speech drawing new red lines came at precisely the moment hard-liners in the Iranian parliament approved a plan for prohibiting Western inspections of military facilities; concluding that sanctions should be lifted at the time the agreement is signed, and that Iran’s right to research and development for its nuclear program should be guaranteed.