Iran nuclear talks: comprehensive deal ‘to be announced as early as Monday’

Julian Borger, Vienna, Sunday 12 July 2015 18.47 BST, Source

A comprehensive deal on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme will be announced as early as Monday after consensus was reached over the weekend on the main outstanding issues, according to western diplomats at the negotiations in Vienna.

The diplomats pointed out that there could still be last-minute surprises sprung by one of the parties to the talks, or squabbling over the language of the final text. Barring such unforeseen obstacles, they said, only technical issues had to be resolved.

After that it would take some hours for the text of the agreement, the English version of which stretches to more than 80 pages including five annexes, to be “scrubbed” or proofread and reviewed by lawyers. Translations would then have to be completed before the final text was sent to the relevant capitals for approval by national leaders.

Under the expected settlement, Iran will accept curbs on its nuclear programme in exchange for extensive sanctions relief. Tehran would also have to subject its facilities to a more rigorous regime of inspections. It would represent a historic compromise after a 12-year standoff that has at times threatened to provoke a new conflict in the Middle East.

US and Iranian officials cautioned against firm predictions on timing, with the Iranian side saying that the final processing of the document, which runs to as many as 100 pages in Farsi, could take until Wednesday.

In a statement issued in mid-afternoon on Sunday, a senior US State Department official said: “We have never speculated about the timing of anything during these negotiations, and we’re certainly not going to start now, especially given the fact that major issues remain to be resolved in these talks.”

As evening fell, however, a general consensus emerged for the first time in 16 days of constant negotiations that the most serious obstacles to an agreement had been overcome, including an 11th-hour impasse over the future of a UN arms embargo and missile programme restrictions on Iran.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, returned from Moscow to rejoin the negotiations on Sunday evening, and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, was also expected.

The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, returned to the UK for unspecified reasons. Diplomats said he was expected back on Monday morning and suggested his departure meant that the main political decisions had been taken as far as the UK was concerned, leaving mostly technicalities to finalise.

Over the weekend, Iranian officials had said that the UK and Germany had made forceful arguments about their own national red lines, and that was confirmed in the British case by western diplomatic sources. Their concerns appeared to have been resolved by Sunday evening.

Once an agreement is announced, it will not take effect for some time. It must first survive a trial by fire from its critics in Washington and Tehran. The greatest hurdle will be the US Congress, where Republicans have a majority and are expected to vote against the deal after a review period of up to 60 days. They will seek to peel off 12 Democrats in an attempt to defeat a presidential veto.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader described the expected deal as “a very hard sell”. Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate foreign relations committee, told NBC: “At the end of the day I think people understand that if this is a bad deal that is going to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, they would own this deal if they voted for it, and so they’ll want to disapprove it.

“On the other hand, if we feel like we’re better off with it, people will look to approve it.”

The European and Chinese foreign ministers have come and gone over the course of the talks and even their Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, left for a day, but John Kerry remained in Vienna throughout. It is the longest time that a US secretary of state has spent abroad in a single location dealing with a single issue since the aftermath of the second world war.

Kerry has also conducted the gruelling fortnight of diplomacy, including repeated late-night meetings, on crutches after a bicycle accident in May.

On Sunday morning he attended mass in Vienna’s 14th-century St Stephen’s Cathedral, where Mozart was married and Vivaldi’s funeral was held.

Speaking about a late-night meeting with Zarif hours before, he said: “I think we’re getting to some real decisions. So I will say, because we have a few tough things to do, I remain hopeful.”

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told reporters as he rejoined the talks on Sunday afternoon: “I hope we’re arriving finally at the last phase of these marathon negotiations. I believe so.”

The road ahead

Although the deal could be agreed and published as early as Monday, it will be months before it starts to come into effect. A number of steps have to be taken first:

• The US Congress will have two months to review the agreement, and then an extra 22 days are set aside for voting, a possible presidential veto, and then another vote to see if opponents can muster 67 Senate votes to override the veto. At the same time, Iran’s parliament or majlis will study the deal and issue its own verdict, but has no firm timetable.

• Assuming it survives legislative scrutiny, the agreement will be codified and incorporated in a UN security council resolution, which will also lift UN sanctions on Iran conditional on Tehran taking its agreed steps to reduce its nuclear infrastructure.

• Iran will then begin to disconnect centrifuges, remove the core from its heavy water plant and reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will monitor and verify the steps taken. Iran will also work with the IAEA to resolve unanswered questions about alleged past nuclear weapon design work.

• At the same time, Barack Obama will grant waivers on economic and financial sanctions, and the EU will vote to lift European sanctions. Both sets of sanctions relief will be made contingent on IAEA confirmation that Iran has upheld its side of the bargain.

In a final step, possibly around the end of the year, economic and financial sanctions will be lifted, and an enhanced IAEA inspections regime will be implemented, routinely monitoring Iran’s fuel cycle from uranium mines to enrichment and fuel manufacture, and visiting undeclared sites.