Switzerland – Nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers will pass the negotiators’ self-imposed Tuesday night deadline to produce the outline of an agreement and will be extended by at least a day, the United States said.
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State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said enough progress had been made to warrant an extension, although there still were “several difficult issues” to bridge. Secretary of State John Kerry who had planned to leave the talks on Tuesday will remain until Wednesday, she said.
Diplomats said China’s foreign minister had left the talks to return to Beijing and would be represented by his deputy. U.S. officials said they were prepared to continue to negotiate into Wednesday if it could lead to a framework accord.
An Iranian negotiator, meanwhile, said his team could stay “as long as necessary” to clear the remaining hurdles.
In Washington, White House press secretary Josh Earnest suggested that talks meant to produce an outline that would allow the sides to continue negotiations until the June 30 final deadline had not bridged all gaps. But he said that the sides were working to produce a text with few specifics, accompanied by documents outlining areas where further talks were needed.
“If it’s necessary — and, when I say if it’s necessary I mean if it’s midnight and a deal has not been reached but the conversations continue to be productive — we’ll be prepared to continue the talks into tomorrow,” he told reporters. “If we are making progress toward the finish line, than we should keep going.”
OMG are you serious?
Nobody expected this!
What an April Fools joke.
Strange, one would have assumed that once Obama gave in on Iran keeping its nuclear program (which the deal was SUPPOSED to get rid of) the Iranians would have gladly agreed to the (rather pointless) deal.
Actually, all the United States wants in order to continue negotiations past the deadline (which, surprise, surprise wasn’t really, really an actual, actual deadline; it was just sort of like something to say to Congress do hold off “just a few more more weeks” kind of thing) is for Iran to agree not to develop nuclear weapons before they actually do so. Iran is seriously considering this “compromise”. The United States team sees this as a step in the right direction, and will probably declare that since significant progress has been made, the deadline (which wasn’t really a deadline to begin with) should be extended.
In the meantime John Kerry will probably suggest that that perhaps the United States should, as a show of good faith, ease some of the sanctions placed on Iran in order to give the Iranians some incentive to continue showing their flexibility and eagerness to reach a “deal” that will be totally to their advantage.
This is the sick joke that the United States has become.