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Deadline day in Lausanne for Iran nuclear talks | Deadline day in Lausanne for Iran nuclear talks |
(35 minutes later) | |
Thirteen years after the Iranian nuclear programme was first exposed, and after 12 years of on-off negotiations, an interim deal and two missed deadlines for a comprehensive agreement, Tuesday is supposed to be the day of truth. Negotiators from seven nations are due to produce an outline for a settlement for one of the most intractable, dangerous problems facing the world. | |
With the deadline looming, the negotiators did not get much sleep last night. The foreign ministers finished their last meeting just before midnight, but the technical experts in various working groups only got a couple of hours in their beds. | With the deadline looming, the negotiators did not get much sleep last night. The foreign ministers finished their last meeting just before midnight, but the technical experts in various working groups only got a couple of hours in their beds. |
On Tuesday morning, there was a palpable sense of exhaustion, from the previous night and from the knowledge that this will almost certainly be another very long day. The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, was photographed in the first ministerial meeting at 7am, propping his head up with his hands. The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told the BBC: “I have been telling the German press we are in a bit of a crisis. Perhaps we will try a bit of a new approach. We will see.” | |
Related: Arab nations alarmed by prospect of US nuclear deal with Iran | |
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was relatively chipper. He spent the night in his own bed in Moscow, where he had returned for seemingly mandatory talks with his counterpart from Vanuatu. He on Tuesday morning that there was “a high chance of success” in Lausanne, and then boarded a plane back to Switzerland. | |
We already know roughly what a deal would look like. Iran would accept stringent limits on its programme for at least 10 years and in return would benefit from sanctions relief that would reintegrate its economy with the rest of the world. The problem is, and has been for 12 years: how many restrictions, how much relief? | |
Related: At last a nuclear deal with Iran is in sight. The chance must not be spurned | Simon Tisdall | |
Midnight is meant to be the cutoff time, but it has soft edges. It was self-imposed by the seven foreign ministers back when the last deadline was missed in November last year. The ultimate deadline is the end of June, when a full, comprehensive, detailed version of the settlement is due to be signed. The end of March was the target date for agreeing a political framework with some of the main facts and figures. | |
There is time pressure all the same. On 14 April, a US senate bill is due to be voted on in committee and go to the floor that would wrest the right to approve or reject a nuclear deal out of Barack Obama’s hands. It would also clear the way to new sanctions. Without a deal in his pocket, Obama will not be able to rely on Democratic support and therefore cannot guarantee that the senate could not override his veto. | |
Another time constraint is imposed by the foreign ministers. They, and the clout they represent, are present now in Lausanne, and they will be a quorum with the imminent return of Lavrov. They cannot, however, go on cancelling their other appointments and neglecting their other duties indefinitely. | |
“The availability of ministers is the real deadline,” said Ali Vaez, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. | |
So what are the possible outcomes? The top-end scenario is a framework agreement that outlines the main points of a deal - how much uranium enrichment Iran is allowed to carry out, how big an enriched uranium stockpile it is permitted to keep and what it will do with the remainder; how long an agreement should last, and when and how sanctions should be lifted, and so on. The US would like the agreement to be set out on a piece of paper to take back to Washington. The Iranians would prefer something loose and verbal that emphasises the lifting of sanctions, to please public opinion back home. | |
Related: Binyamin Netanyahu denounces Iran nuclear negotiations | |
A second scenario is that the negotiators miss their deadline and plough on through the night and into Wednesday, relying on the diplomacy of attrition until a common declaration is produced. This could be verbal, to be followed a few days later with a more detailed document sketching out the areas of agreement. The Iranians would like the announcement to be made in Geneva, which would trigger a dash along the lakeshore, no doubt with blue lights flashing all the way. | |
Another possibility is that the foreign ministers fail and adjourn for a few days, perhaps regrouping after Easter, which would still give a few days before the US congress acts. | |
Least likely is that they fail and walk away from a deal altogether. After all the years’ work, the narrow gaps that remain and the potentially frightening consequences of failure, no one here can afford a collapse. | Least likely is that they fail and walk away from a deal altogether. After all the years’ work, the narrow gaps that remain and the potentially frightening consequences of failure, no one here can afford a collapse. |
On balance, a framework deal is still the most likely outcome, if only because it can be tailored to some extent to what has been agreed. Anything left undone in Lausanne will leave more to do by the end of June. |
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