©AFP Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (second left) is leading Tehran's delegation in Lausanne
Representatives of the world powers gathering in the Swiss city of Lausanne this weekend insist they are closer than ever to reaching a nuclear deal with Iran.
Mohammed Javad Zerif, Iran’s foreign minister said in a tweet from the negotiations on Saturday afternoon that both sides had “shown flexibility” and were “ready to make a good deal for all” if both sides could push to bridge the remaining gaps.
Yet while an agreement is needed by the official framework early next week — or even late this weekend — diplomats say almost two-thirds of any final text is still up for negotiation. Many of the most contentious issues also remain unresolved.
Arriving in Lausanne early on Saturday afternoon, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier indicated that while an end to the negotiations was close, the remaining hours of the talks would be anything but easy.
“The summit is in sight, but when you’re crossing the mountains, the last few metres are the most critical,” Mr Steinmeier said on the steps of the neo-Baroque Beau Rivage hotel — the grand setting for the talks on the shore of lake Geneva.
Diplomats expect discussions to continue well into the evening.
Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary on Friday signalled that the talks would go down to the wire, when he hinted at the potential for the deadline for a deal to be extended by two weeks to April 14 — the point at which the Easter recess of the US Congress will come to an end.
A “step change” was still needed in a small number of key areas in the negotiations, Mr Hammond said.
Officials in Lausanne still insist a March deal is what they are working towards.
As the security situation worsens in the Middle East, the Iran nuclear talks have offered a rare opportunity for diplomacy to resolve one of the region’s most intractable disputes.
A deal with Tehran has become one of the foreign policy objectives for President Barack Obama. But the prosect of nuclear detente with the Islamic regime has also invited fierce criticism, alienating regional allies of the west in Israel and the Gulf region.
Diplomats are adamant that any announcement will be both substantial and comprehensive. They also insist, as Mr Hammond’s remarks suggested, that a deal will have to address all the disputed areas, not just those they had already agreed upon, as many had expected.
“We are not playing a game about this. We are not going to come out with a broad, wishy-washy understanding that falls apart the minute our backs are turned,” said a senior UK diplomat, when asked about whether the text of the agreement could be short on detail.
“If there is an agreement over the coming days, it will set out the broad parameters under all the key issues,” the diplomat added.
The current framework demands a broad, high-level agreement by march, with negotiators then having until the end of June to flesh out the technical details and ink a final, signed deal to permanently curb Iran’s atomic programme in return for a phased end to crippling economic sanctions.
Delegations from the so-called P5+1 — the five permanent members of the security council and Germany — began arriving in Switzerland on Thursday to kick off a frantic five days with counterparts from Tehran in order to hit Tuesday’s looming month-end deadline.
Hopes of a deal have been raised as weeks of urgent diplomacy — in particular between the US and Iran — appear to have nudged negotiators close to an agreement on the central issue: the number of centrifuges Iran would be permitted to keep operating to enrich its own uranium.
Ahough positive, an announcement on centrifuges alone in the coming days would be like bolting the front door only to leave the back window open, said one diplomat in Lausanne.
Sources familiar with the negotiations said the areas which have yet to be resolved included dismantlement of the surplus centrifuge cascades; research and development into newer, faster centrifuges; the future of the fortified nuclear facility at Fordow; and the phasing of sanctions relief. Of those, two are particularly thorny. Diplomats fear that the development of new centrifuges could hollow out the breakout time — the minimum period it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon if it decided to renege on the deal — no matter how tight other areas of agreement are.
Iran has also pushed hard for the early dismantlement of UN-level sanctions, the key leverage that P5+1 has over Tehran.
Cliff Kupchan, chairman of Eurasia Group, a consultancy, said: “This is one of those issues where there are 10 balls in the air at the same time. But I think on substance we [will] have a one-year breakout time.”.
A 12-month breakout period has been the key objective of the P5+1.
Agreement on these main points would mean areas of specific technical disagreements would start to “peel away”, Mr Kupchan said. “The key will be very rigorous back-end inspection and verification, perhaps an additional protocol plus,” he added, referring to the possibility of an even stricter nuclear inspection regime undertaken by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Notwithstanding the substance of any agreement next week, it is also still not known what form the deal will take. Most involved in the process expect a “fact sheet” but not a formal memorandum of understanding and certainly no signed agreement.
The danger, diplomats say, is that if too little is hammered out in the coming days, then the next three months of technical negotiations could fail to gain traction.
A thin political deal in the next few days could also derail the remainder of the talks as hawks in Washington and hardliners in Tehran attack its lack of substance. On the other hand, too much agreed in writing would have its pitfalls too, offering critics a raft of half-formed agreements to pick apart.
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