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“Mark my words; you can’t change horses in the middle of a stream”.

All bets remained off as negotiators held back-to-back meetings before Friday’s effective deadline, hoping to end a 13-year standoff with Iran over its suspect nuclear programme.

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...

“We are here because we believe we are making real progress toward a comprehensive deal”, Mr. Kerry told reporters outside the Coburg Palais hotel in Vienna.

But Iran has been objecting strenuously. Officials on Tuesday missed a self-imposed deadline to complete the deal, and now hope to wrap up on Friday. Current intelligence estimates put the Iranians only two to three months away from amassing enough material for a nuclear warhead,...

“Iran is ready to strike a fair and balanced deal and prepared to open new horizons to address the shared challenges of far greater magnitude”, Zarif wrote. Support for the Iranian regime and hostility toward the United States among the Iranian population would nearly...

“On any given day, if we feel that we’re just not going to get there, that will be that”. “Either this works in the next 48 hours or it doesn’t”.

“We are not yet where we need to be on several of the most critical issues”, Kerry told reporters outside the 19th-century Viennese palace that has hosted the negotiations.

Officials from both sides warned however that success was far from guaranteed.

If Iran were shown to have cheated on the JPOA, it would make it more hard for Obama to sell a long-term accord to lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on Iranian nuclear work to skeptical lawmakers in the Republican-led Congress.

Iran and the group of Britain, China, France, Russia, the U.S. and Germany want to close a deal by Tuesday midnight. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman who authored the bill that set up the July 9 deadline said Sunday he urged Kerry not to focus on...

Blocking a deal would require a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, because Obama would be expected to veto any attempt to stop a deal his administration believes will cut off Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon.

The administration has argued a deal with Iran could make the Middle East safer by keeping nuclear weapons from Tehran.

The language in the message was more pessimistic than in one sent previous year on the USA Independence Day, in which Putin said he was certain the United States and Russian Federation could solve problems “regardless of the fact that not all approaches of the sides...

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.