VIENNA – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry officially told Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during their meeting Sunday night to consider extending the nuclear talks by a few months, according to senior American officials.

All day Sunday there were intensive negotiations between Zarif’s team and the negotiating teams of the six world powers — United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — to reach a permanent agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, before the Monday midnight deadline for the talks.

“It’s only natural that when we find ourselves a short time before the deadline that we explore all our various options and extending the talks is one of those options,” said Western diplomats participating in the negotiations.

Kerry has been holding talks with Zarif since Thursday in an effort to get Iran to cap its nuclear activities in return for lifting sanctions.

Following morning conversations between the chief negotiators for Iran, the United States and the European Union, a trilateral meeting got underway at 10:30 A.M. Vienna time between Kerry, Zarif and EU representative Catherine Ashton, which ended at around 12:30.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal made a brief stopover at the Vienna airport Sunday afternoon to be updated on the talks by Kerry, who met his Saudi counterpart on his plane at the airport.

Kerry met Zarif alone Sunday evening, and was due to then meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who arrived in Vienna on Sunday evening. Later, the U.S. secretary of state was scheduled to meet British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammon, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Ashton. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is due to arrive in the Austrian capital Monday morning.

Upon arriving in Vienna, Fabius said that disagreements still remained between the powers and Iran, but stressed that there were still 24 hours in which to work. Fabius, Hammon, Steinmeier and Ashton ended the day by having dinner with Kerry, during which they coordinated positions for Monday’s final day of talks.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday hinted that he supports the extension of talks with Iran.

“We are closely following the talks in Vienna,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, adding that Israel is “concerned” about developments at the talks, and that Jerusalem was in contact with the United States and the other countries.

“We are presenting them with a firm stance that Iran should not be allowed to become a nuclear threshold state,” Netanyahu said. “There is no reason it should be allowed to retain thousands of centrifuges, which would allow it to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb in a short amount of time. There is also no reason for Iran to continue developing intercontinental missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and threaten the entire world. Therefore, no deal would be preferable to a bad deal that threatens Israel, the Middle East and all of humanity.”

In an interview with ABC later Sunday, Netanyahu said that he doesn’t yet “know if there is going to be a deal between Iran and the six world powers. We must not dismantle sanctions before we dismantle Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear bomb.”

Netanyahu’s interview was broadcast only a few minutes after an interview with U.S. President Barack Obama, who also dealt with the Iran negotiations. Obama stressed that there were still wide gaps between Iran and the six powers, but that if a deal is reached, he is confident that he will not only be able to convince Congress to back it, but also the American people.

He added, however, that even if a deal is reached, a long path still remains toward normalizing ties between the United States and Iran.

“[We] still have the problem of Iran sponsoring terrorist activities in the region, we still have problems in terms of their attitude towards friends like Israel,” he said.