Iran talks likely to miss second deadline
July 6, 2015, 7:25 pm

Iran nuclear talks meetings are being held at the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna, Austria [Xinhua]

The June 30 deadline has come and gone; an Iranian official in Vienna said last week deadlines don’t really matter.

The White House has quietly said that July 7 is the new deadline, but both Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif appear to be meeting and negotiating without the shadow of a looming end to talks.

The two have been meeting in Vienna for more than a week.

On Sunday, Kerry said that the talks have been ongoing for years and could come to a fruitful end if tough decisions are made.

One of those decisions pertains to an Iranian demand that an international arms embargo be lifted once a final deal is signed.

The US State Department says that can’t be done without a UN Security Council resolution to lift the embargo. Iran says that it has been treated unfairly by the UNSC.

Nevertheless, some progress was made over the weekend regarding another key Iranian demand – the immediate lifting of economic sanctions.

Negotiators said they had reached agreement on the language to be used regarding the lifting of sanctions, but that it needed to be finalized by the foreign ministers of the six countries.

The intensive talks have been dragging on since April when Iran and the P5+1 signed the the Lausanne agreement, which stated that Iran will curb its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of punitive economic sanctions.

The tentative text states that Iran would be allowed to keep some of its nuclear research, limiting the number of centrifuges (needed to produce fissile material for an atomic bomb) to about 1,000.

However, the centrifuges would contain no fissile material.

Iran would also have to submit to very intrusive inspections by weapons experts in the months ahead.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies