World powers will on Tuesday miss yet another deadline to nail down an elusive nuclear deal over the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons projects, despite hours of difficult top-level negotiations.
In a sign of how complex the negotiations have become, foreign ministers from the P5+1 states and the Iranian regime met deep into the night Monday grappling with the toughest remaining issues which have so far thwarted a deal to curtail Tehran’s nuclear program.
In what has become a high-stakes game of diplomatic poker, the ministers met twice Monday with the Iranian regime’s delegation led by its Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for a total of almost three hours.
In what appeared to be a new spanner in the works, AFP quoted an Iranian official as saying that Tehran now wanted to ensure there was no renewal of a UN “arms embargo” enshrined within the new accord.
A fact sheet put out by the State Department after the April 2 framework accord said that once any deal is reached there would be a new UN Security Council resolution to extend “important restrictions on conventional arms and ballistic missiles”.
Western officials are clearly balking at any notion of allowing the Iranian regime to buy conventional weapons, at a time when it is accused of fomenting unrest in the Middle East through proxies such as Hezbollah militants.
Criticism of the nuclear deal and the Iranian regime’s approach continue to mount. Ali Safavi, a member of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Digital Journal: “The UN weapons embargo must remain in place and out not be lifted under any circumstances. The missile program and development of warheads have been an integral part of Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. This latest demand is yet another indication that the regime seeks to pursue its quest for the Bomb. The P5+1 must include the total dismantlement of the missile program in the final agreement with the Iranian regime.”
The sides will continue negotiations for a nuclear deal past Tuesday’s deadline for a long-term agreement, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.
“We are continuing to negotiate for the next couple of days. This does not mean we are extending our deadline,” Mogherini told reporters on Tuesday.
“We might see some ministers leaving in the next hours and then ready to come back,” Mogherini said.
“We are interpreting in a flexible way our deadline, which means that we are taking the time, the days we still need, to finalize the agreement,” she said, adding that there remained several difficult issues to resolve.
The negotiators missed a June 30 deadline for a final agreement and then gave themselves until Tuesday.
Asked whether Tuesday’s deadline may slip, White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday said: “I would say that it’s certainly possible.”
State Department spokesman John Kirby on Monday told reporters in Washington that Tuesday was “not a deadline. It was an extension of basically seven days of the parameters” of an April 2 framework accord struck in Lausanne.
A source within the German delegation said: “We are not there yet… We should not underestimate that important questions remain unresolved. There will not be an agreement at any price.”
“If there is no movement in decisive areas a failure is not ruled out.”
According to Reuters, an Iranian official earlier made it clear that “July 7, July 8, we do not consider these dates as those dates we have to finish our job.”
“Even if we pass July 9, that will not be the end of the world,” the Iranian said, asking not to be identified.
The P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — are seeking to nail down an accord to put a nuclear bomb out of the Iranian regime’s reach. The agreement under discussion would require Iran to curb its most sensitive nuclear work for a decade or more in exchange for relief from sanctions that have slashed its oil exports and crippled its economy.
An online panel will be held on Wednesday, July 8, 2015 to discuss the possible international nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime. It will be streamed live here on ncr-iran.org.
The pending nuclear agreement between the P 5+1 and the Iranian regime will have major consequences for global peace and security. The panel of experts will discuss the prospects of the deal, the significance of intrusive inspections, the challenges the international community faces for verification, and Tehran’s strategy. There will also be a live Questions and Answers session.
The event will start at 11:00 a.m. (Washington DC)
(17:00 Central European Summer Time).
You can send questions to the panel via Twitter using #Iranfreedom or @Iran_policy