A dispute over UN sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and a broader arms embargo were among issues holding up a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers on Monday, the day before their latest self-imposed deadline.
“The Iranians want the ballistic missile sanctions lifted,” one Western official told Reuters. “They say there is no reason to connect it with the nuclear issue, a view that is difficult to accept. There’s no appetite for that on our part.”
Iranian and other Western officials confirmed this view. The foreign ministers of the six powers—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States—met on Monday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. They were expected to meet again soon, to try to strike a deal by Tuesday night.
“The Western side insists that not only should it [Iran’s ballistic missile program] remain under sanctions, but that Iran should suspend its program as well,” an Iranian official said.
“But Iran is insisting on its rights and says all the sanctions, including on the ballistic missiles, should be lifted when the UN sanctions are lifted.”
Separately, a senior Iranian official told reporters in Vienna on condition of anonymity that Iran wanted a United Nations arms embargo terminated as well. A senior Western diplomat said a removal was “out of the question.”
The deal under discussion is aimed at curbing Iran’s most sensitive nuclear work for a decade or more, in exchange for relief from sanctions that have slashed Iran’s oil exports and crippled its economy.
An agreement would be the most important milestone in decades toward easing hostility between the United States and Iran, enemies since Iranian revolutionaries captured 52 hostages at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.
An Iranian official told the semi-official Tasnim News Agency that the talks could continue until July 9, echoing some Western diplomats. A White House spokesman in Washington said it was “certainly possible” the deadline could slip.
A deal could reduce the chance of any military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, something Washington has refused to rule out, and the possibility of a wider war in the Middle East, where conflicts already rage in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Iranian leaders have warned that Iran would respond to any attack by targeting US interests and Israel.
“Israel is a fake temporary state,” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying on Monday. “It’s a foreign object in the body of a nation, and it will be erased soon.”
At a meeting with visiting Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias in Jerusalem on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We face the possibility that a deal will be signed with Iran, which is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world. This deal, as far as we can see, comes on almost daily concessions from the P5+1 to growing Iranian demands. Every day, more concessions are made and every day the deal becomes worse and worse. I could say that what we see in Vienna is not a breakthrough, but more like a breakdown, a breakdown of the principles that the P5+1 committed itself to uphold in the Lausanne negotiations.
“This deal will pave Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal. It will give them a jackpot of hundreds of billions of dollars with which to continue to fund their aggression and terror—aggression in the region, terror throughout the world. It’s something that I think we should work against, because when you have such a bad deal that resembles more and more the deal with North Korea, the conclusion is simple. It’s been said before by many leaders, and I’ll say it again now: Better no deal than this very bad deal.”
If a deal is reached, it would include a draft UN Security Council resolution that, once adopted, would terminate all UN nuclear-related sanctions while simultaneously reimposing other existing restrictions on Iran.
The six powers argue that removing those measures could further destabilize the region.
“Intense work is going on to try and conclude by the deadline,” a senior Western diplomat said, referring to Tuesday.
A German diplomat, however, said “failure is not ruled out.” IRNA quoted an Iranian official saying that “serious differences” remained after the ministerial meeting.
US President Barack Obama must submit the deal to Congress by July 9 in order to get an accelerated 30-day review. If it is submitted later, the Republican-led Congress would have 60 days to review it, providing more time for the deal to unravel.
In parallel with the powers’ talks, delegates from the International Atomic Energy Agency were due to hold talks with Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday, following a visit from IAEA chief Yukiya Amano last week.
The powers want Iran to grant more access to IAEA inspectors and to answer its questions about previous nuclear work that may have had military purposes.
Meanwhile, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid sparked a political firestorm in Israel on Monday when he said, “If this bad deal is signed, it is a failure that has Netanyahu’s name all over it.”
Likud MK Tzachi Hanegbi called Lapid’s words “outrageous and rude.” Hanegbi said blaming the nuclear deal on Netanyahu would be like blaming the 1938 Munich Agreement on Winston Churchill instead of Neville Chamberlain.
