Wild weekend in Vienna

The Iran talks, plus the interim nuclear agreement under which they’re operating, have been extended through Monday. Progress is being made, supposedly, but not enough and not fast enough to get anything done this week. If no deal is reached by Monday…

Remember how I said you should ignore stuff coming out of Vienna that sounds hyperbolic? Yeah, that still applies. The talks may very well “end” on Monday without a deal, but there’s a difference between ending the talks, which could mean anything from a temporary pause to a total breakdown, and the “failure” of the talks, which is pretty specific. Iran does have the least to gain from indefinitely keeping these talks going under the terms of the Joint Plan of Action, so it would likely be the party that chooses to walk away, but the Iranians will want to make a case that American intransigence and intra-P5+1 discord left them no other choice. They may have already started doing that:

The Iran nuclear talks shifted Friday to a blame game, as Iran’s foreign minister accused the United States of shifting its demands and dismissed a warning that the U.S. was ready to quit the negotiations.

…

Still, disagreements also have surfaced recently between the U.S. and Russia. Moscow supports Iranian demands for at least a partial lifting of the conventional arms embargo as part of any deal. That’s something Washington opposes — and an issue Zarif appeared to touch on in his comments to Iranian state television.

Beyond “witnessing a change of stances” from the other side, Zarif noted a “different stand” on some issues among the six nations. “This situation has made the work difficult,” he said.

It sounds like the key issues are still the key issues: inspector access to military sites, the nature of UN sanctions relief, and how Iran will be punished if it fails to uphold its obligations, so how much “progress” has actually been made is unclear.

If the choice is between completely ending the talks and staying in Vienna for another several days, then staying in Vienna is the right call. But if “ending” the talks means just taking a break, frankly that might not be such a terrible idea. The negotiators must be pretty exhausted by now, and that’s not going to make for great negotiations.

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