Final Push in Iran Nuclear Talks as Extension Looms

Time runs out Monday for the best chance in years to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear file, as Tehran and six powers make a final push for a deal but with an extension looking increasingly likely.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany (the P5+1) have been locked in talks with Iran for months, seeking to turn an interim deal that expires at midnight (2300 GMT) on Monday into a lasting accord.

   “What a deal would do is take a big piece of business off the table and perhaps begin a long process in which the relationship not just between Iran and us but the relationship between Iran and the world, and the region, begins to change,” US President Barack Obama said in an ABC News interview Sunday.

  But a last-ditch diplomatic blitz in Vienna in recent days involving US Secretary of State John Kerry and other foreign ministers appears to have failed to bridge the remaining major differences.

  As a result, late Sunday Iranian and US officials said they had started talking about plan B — the option of putting more time on the diplomatic clock.

  A senior US official said it was “only natural that just over 24 hours from the deadline we are discussing a range of options … An extension is one of those options.” An Iranian source told AFP that an extension was “discussed”. “There is nothing concrete yet,” he added.

  This came after Kerry met his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif for the sixth time since Thursday but again apparently failed to break the deadlock.

  British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said however that the parties would still make a “big push tomorrow (Monday) morning to try and get this across the line”.

  Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in the Austrian capital early Monday, completing the line-up of all the six powers’ foreign ministers including Laurent Fabius of France and Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier. This included Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a key player in the talks.

President Vladimir Putin was due to talk to President Rouhani by phone later Monday, ITAR-TASS reported.

Al-Manar

Maher Taki