Iran and the six countries acting as brokers in the nuclear negotiations (the United States, Britain,France,Germany,RussiaandChina) failed for a second time this year on Monday, 24 November, in Vienna,to resolve their 12-year dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, and gave themselves seven more months to overcome the deadlock that has prevented them from clinching a historic deal.
The deadline was extendedto June 30, 2015, in the frame of what is known as theJoint Plan of Action (JPOA), an interim deal agreed between the six andIrana year ago in Geneva, underwhich Tehran halted higher level uranium enrichment in exchange for a limited easing of sanctions, including access to some frozen oil revenues abroad.
During the extension period, Tehran will be able to continue to access around $700 million per month in sanctions relief.
The deadline for a deal, agreed in July when the two sides missed an earlier target date, was today, 24 November.
The Vienna talks aimed for a deal that could transform the Middle East, open the door to ending economic sanctions on Iran and start to bring a nation of 76 million people in from the cold afterdecades of hostility with the West.
The cost of failure threatened to be high, as Iran's regional foes Israel and Saudi Arabia are watching nervously. A collapseof the negotiations could have encourage Iran to become a threshold nuclear weapon state, something Israel has said it would never allow.
The U.S. had already toldIran onSunday that it's time to consider extending nuclear talks, in the first formal recognition by Washington that frenzied last-minute diplomacy may not be enoughto seal a deal by a rapidly approaching deadline.
US Secretary of State John Kerry proposed to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Java Zarf that the two sides start discussing post-deadline talks in their latest meeting since Kerry arrived inVienna three days ago to add his diplomatic weight to the talks.
Beyond assurances that the Iranians aren't just talking for the sake of winning time, the US administration wants to show to congressional skeptics that there is sense to continuing the talks.That explains why Washington pushed the Iranians to accept at least one of their demands on the table.
Talks could now resume in early December when Kerry plans to return to Europe for a previously scheduled NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, and aninternational conference in London.
Outlining some differences between Washington and Tehran in general terms, President Barack Obama said the U.S. goal is "to shut off a whole bunch of different avenues wherebyIranmightget a nuclear weapon, and at the same time make sure that the structure of sanctions are rolled back step for step asIranis doing what it's supposed to do."
In a breakthrough preliminary deal reached a year ago, the United States and European Union also agreed to ease some sanctions on Iran while Tehran agreed to some curbs on its nuclear programs.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/missing-deadline-iran-nuclear-talks-extended