Iran’s negotiating team headed by deputy FM Seyed Abbas Araghchi will depart for Vienna tomorrow morning to resume the drafting of the text of a final deal over Tehran’s nuclear program.
This round of talks comes as there is only three more weeks left to the June 30 deadline for reaching a final nuclear agreement. The two sides are more likely to continue the negotiations nonstop over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the two sides had deemed the drafting process ‘very slow’ during the previous five rounds of talks. Remaining differences and the slow process of drafting were the two reasons Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry met on May 30 in Geneva.
Although no official result was announced by the two foreign ministers at the end of the May 30 meeting, there is still hope Zarif and Kerry’s talks would play a hand in expediting the drafting process in the next few weeks.
Questioning Iranian nuclear scientists and inspecting Iran’s military sites as part of signing up to the Additional Protocol had been two instances of the other side’s excessive demands which have been completely removed from the negotiating table followed by Ayatollah Khamenei’s strong objection to them.
The Thursday talks will be at the deputy levels while the foreign ministers’ attendance at tomorrow’s talks is still unknown.