Iran nuke deal: Failure not an option
Iran, the US and other world powers meeting in Vienna this week are close to a historic, comprehensive agreement that could bring a permanent end to 12 years of deadlock over Iran's nuclear programme.
With a deadline for the talks looming in a week's time, diplomats are converging on the Austrian capital for the last stretch of marathon negotiations beginning today, with the outcome still in the balance.
Compromises have been found on previously contentious issues, and detailed text for different versions of a final deal has been drafted.
Some diplomats describe their work as 95% done, pending political decisions to be made in national capitals over Iran's capacity to enrich uranium over the next few years, and the sequence in which international sanctions are lifted.
Several leading arms-control experts have argued that the residual obstacles are more political than substantial, determined by the need of President Barack Obama's administration and President Hassan Rohani's reformist government in Iran to reassure conservatives at home, rather than by the actual requirements of Iran's nuclear energy programme or genuine nonproliferation concerns.
There are also differences among the six-nation group involved in the negotiations with Iran. France has consistently been more opposed to nuclear concessions than the other five (the US, UK, Germany, Russia and China).
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, flew to Paris on 4 November for talks with Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, seeking assurances that he would not make a public intervention in the last few days of negotiations. In the closing stages of talks over the 2013 interim deal, Fabius warned against western concessions, saying Paris would not play along with a “fool's game”. Accounts vary as to whether Kerry was able to secure a guarantee from Fabius not to break ranks in the eleventh hour of talks.
“For Fabius, the ties with the Gulf Arabs – Saudi Arabia and Qatar – are much more important economically, and for French jobs in the next few years, than Iran,” said a French source familiar with the discussions. The Sunni monarchies in the Gulf are as opposed as Israel to western endorsement of an Iranian nuclear programme on any scale.
“I think extension is the least likely scenario because of the domestic political ramifications for all sides,” said Reza Marashi, a former state department official, who is research director of the National Iranian American Council in Washington. “In the words of the negotiators themselves: failure is not an option.”
Given the high stakes, all sides at the Vienna talks will be extremely reluctant to break off negotiations if a complete agreement is not reached by 24 November. One option would be to announce a framework agreement, leaving gaps to be worked out later, or simply extend the talks. But neither option would be politically sustainable for long without proof of genuine progress.
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