As the latest headline approaches at nuclear talks in Vienna, the brinksmanship intensifies and the Iranians insist they are in no particular hurry

While US and five other global powers are working towards wrapping up the nuclear talks in Vienna by Tuesday night, so as to meet a congressional deadline two days later, the Iranian delegation insists it is not bound by that timetable. A senior Iranian official said:

We do not see any definite deadline. July 7, July 8 or July 9 - we do not consider these dates as dates we have to finish our job. Even if we do not finish by July 9, it will not be the end of the world. We need to get a good agreement.

This studied insouciance over the urgency of the talks is itself just one way in which the brinksmanship is intensifying at the nuclear talks in Vienna. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, is under pressure from the Republican majority to deliver a copy of the deal to Congress by Thursday night, or else Congress will take two months instead of one to review it, seeking to build opposition state by state and district by district with each passing day. To add insult to urgency, the author of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, Senator Bob Corker, has been chiding Kerry for rushing to meet the deadline that he, Corker, had imposed.

For all the apparent disdain for the deadline, it would also be a setback for the Iranian negotiators if any agreement brokered in Vienna fell to pieces in Congress, in turn emboldening the deal’s enemies in Iran. And the Iranian official hastened to add that his delegation was not taking it easy.

An extension is in no one’s interests. If we need to stay some more days in Vienna, it is much better to stay here than to go home and come back.

He said the outstanding issues are being whittled down to a few to put before the foreign ministers from the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China who have come to Vienna to join Kerry and Iran’s Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Three months ago, there were quite a few unresolved issues...Now there are just a few items to be tackled by the ministers. That is why the ministers are here today and they will be probably here tomorrow. Many issues have been resolved at the expert level, transferred to the deputy minister level and some are left for ministers and these are tough issues.

The toughest issues in his view are the wording of a new UN Security Council resolution that would de-stigmatise Iran, the removal of the arms embargo on Iran and the question of ‘snapbacks’.

Hitherto, the West has only been offering the lifting of economic and financial sanctions imposed to try force Iran to cease its nuclear programme. Iran wants the ban on arms sales to be lifted as well, and has the support of at least of Russia, which has lined up a string of weapons deals with Tehran.

What was the reason for the inclusion of the arms embargo in the UN resolution in the first place? That question should be posed to our American and European partners.

The issue of ‘snapbacks’ has up to now applied principally to sanctions, and a mechanism has supposedly been drafted which would allow them to be re-imposed without a new Security Council resolution. A lot of time has been spent on this issue, and the senior Iranian official briefing the press today said there now needed to be talk about ‘snapbacks’ that Tehran could impose. He did not go into detail, but presumably they would involve regenerating capacity in its nuclear programme if the West failed to deliver promised sanctions relief.

Snapbacks is also one of the issues we have been discussing. It is something that needs to be provided to all sides, not just one side.

The bottom line is that the July 7 deadline is looking shaky as the parties take each other to the brink, but there is no appetite on any side to stay much longer. They can all see the finish line.