What hope for Iran nuke deal?

Iran and world powers have given themselves seven more months to reach a nuclear deal, but a heightened risk of hardliners wrecking the process means they may have missed their best chance ever, analysts say.
It also remains far from certain that putting yet more time on the clock will help, when after 10 rounds of talks the two sides still remain poles apart on the fundamental issues.
US Secretary of State John Kerry admitted as much on Monday after he and foreign ministers from Iran and the other powers decided to extend their deadline for a deal to July 1, after intense days of talks in Vienna.
"These talks aren't going to suddenly get easier just because we extend them," Kerry told reporters. "They are tough. They have been tough and they are going to stay tough."
Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif stressed that some progress has been made, with Zarif even suggesting that a deal was possible "much faster" than in seven months. They aim to have the outlines by March.
But it is clear that when it comes to the two main sticking points -- the future scale of Iran's nuclear programme and the pace of sanctions relief for Iran -- they remain perhaps as far away as ever.
So why have the officials, experts and diplomats, bothered putting more time on the clock?
The reason is quite simple. The alternative -- a collapse of the talks and a return to the explosive situation before last November's interim deal -- is far worse. Kerry said the parties would be "fools to walk away".
Before the November 2013 accord kicked in, Iran was enriching uranium to close to weapons-grade, the West was applying more and more sanctions and the danger of Israeli and US military action was growing.
Now, key parts of Iran's programme are frozen, meaning that, unlike before, the country is no longer creeping ever closer to potentially creating a bomb. In return, it receives around $700 million every month as overseas assets are freed up. This will continue until July.
"If either side decides to walk away, the consequences will be catastrophic," Kelsey Davenport, analyst at the Arms Control Association, told AFP.
"As long as Iran's programme remains capped and the sanctions remain capped then both parties are better off," agreed Fitzpatrick.
"Seven months is longer than anyone expected, but the longer the better."