No plan to continue Iran nuclear talks long past July 7//Possible breakthrough on implementing Iran sanction relief//Liberman:SIS, Gaza militants, Iran nuclear negotiators, do not give Israel a second thought’

Possible breakthrough on implementing Iran sanction relief
Associated Press/Ynetnews
Published: 07.04.15/ Israel News

Issue of sanction relief has been the center of contention between the powers and Iran; possible breakthrough would represent a major step in the direction of a final agreement.World powers and Iran have reached tentative agreement on sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic, among the most contentious issues in a long-term nuclear agreement that negotiators hope to clinch over the next several days, diplomats told The Associated Press on Saturday.The annex, one of five meant to accompany the agreement, outlines which US and international sanctions will be lifted and how quickly. Diplomats said senior officials of the seven-nation talks, which include US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, still had to sign off on the package.

Still, the word of significant progress indicated the sides were moving closer to a comprehensive accord that would set a decade of restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for tens of billions of dollars’ in economic benefits for the Iranians.  Officials had described sanctions relief as one of the thorniest disagreements between Iran and the United States, which has led the international pressure campaign against Iran’s economy. The US and much of the world fears Iran’s enrichment of uranium and other activity could be designed to make nuclear weapons; Iran says its program is meant only to generate power and for other peaceful purposes. The diplomats, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on this past week’s confidential negotiations in Vienna, said the sanctions annex was completed this week by experts from Iran and the six world powers it is negotiating with: the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. They did not provide details of the agreement.

A senior US official did not dispute the diplomats’ account but said work remained to be done before the issue could be described as finalized. Negotiators are striving to wrap up the deal by July 7. Along with inspection guidelines and rules governing Iran’s research and development of advanced nuclear technology, the sanctions annex of the agreement had been among the toughest issues remaining to be resolved. Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have made repeated demands for economic penalties to be lifted shortly after a deal is reached. Washington and its partners have said they’d take action after Iran verifiably complies with restrictions on enrichment and other elements of the nuclear program.

Much of the negotiation on the matter has concerned sequencing, so that both sides can legitimately claim to have gotten their way. Several other matters related to sanctions also had posed problems. The Obama administration cannot move too quickly to remove economic penalties because of Congress, which will have a 30-day review period for any agreement during which no sanctions can be waived. American officials also had been struggling to separate the “nuclear-related” sanctions it is prepared to suspend from those it wishes to keep, including measures designed to counteract Iranian ballistic missile efforts, human rights violations and support for US-designated terrorist organizations.
And to keep pressure on Iran, world powers had been hoping to finalize a system for snapping suspended sanctions back into force if Iran cheats on the accord. Russia has traditionally opposed any plan that would see them lose their UN veto power and a senior Russian negotiator said only this week that his government rejected any automatic “snapback” of sanctions.

Senior Western diplomat: No plan to continue Iran nuclear talks long past July 7
By REUTERS /J.Post/07/03/2015
VIENNA – A year and half of nuclear talks between Iran and major powers were creeping towards the finish line on Friday as negotiators wrestled with sticking points including questions about Tehran’s past atomic research. Iran is in talks with the United States and five other powers – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia – on an agreement to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. “We are coming to the end,” said a senior Western diplomat, who added there was no plan to carry on for long past next Tuesday. “Either we get an agreement or we don’t,” he said, adding that the process “remains quite difficult.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Iranian state television that “a lot of progress has been made, but still various technical issues remain that need the other party’s political will.”Still, all sides say a deal is within reach. U.S., European and Iranian officials, including U.S. Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Iranian deputy foreign ministers Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takhteravanchi, held a six-hour negotiating session that ended at 3 a.m. on Friday, a senior U.S. official said. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Zarif were due to hold a bilateral session on Friday, though that meeting was delayed several times.

Russia’s chief negotiator Sergei Ryabkov said the text of the agreement was more than 90 percent complete. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi voiced confidence that the parties would reach a mutually acceptable accord. The negotiators missed a June 30 deadline for a final agreement, but have given themselves until July 7, and foreign ministers not already in Vienna are due to return on Sunday for a final push. A deal, if agreed, would require Iran to severely curtail uranium enrichment work for more than a decade to ensure it would need at least one year’s “breakout time” to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single weapon, compared with current estimates of two to three months.

QUESTIONS ABOUT IRAN’S PAST
Western and Iranian officials said there were signs of a compromise emerging on one of the major sticking points: access to Iranian sites to monitor compliance with a future agreement. A senior Iranian official in Vienna said on Thursday that Iran would sign up to an IAEA inspection regime called the Additional Protocol, which would be provisionally implemented at the start of a deal and later ratified by Iran’s parliament. The Protocol allows IAEA inspectors increased access to sites where they suspect nuclear activity is taking place, but U.S. officials say it is insufficient because Iran has in the past stalled by dragging out negotiations over access requests. The Iranian official said Iran could also agree to a system of “managed access” – which is strictly limited to protect legitimate military or industrial secrets – to relevant military sites.

The issue of Iran’s past nuclear research is more difficult.
Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on Thursday met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other officials in Tehran to discuss the IAEA’s unresolved questions. But on Friday he said in a statement that there had been no breakthrough and “more work will be needed.”Western diplomats said they were not demanding a public confession that Iran had conducted research into building a nuclear warhead, but that the IAEA had to be satisfied it knew the full scope of past Iranian activity to establish a credible basis for future monitoring. Officials close to the Vienna talks say the suspension of some sanctions will be tied to resolving this issue. “It’s time to close this chapter,” the senior Western diplomat said.

Other sticking points include the timing of the suspension of sanctions, and Iranian acceptance of a plan to restore U.S., European Union and United Nations sanctions if Tehran fails to comply with the terms of the agreement. Another obstacle is Iran’s determination to maintain the ability to continue research and development involving advanced centrifuges, machines that spin at supersonic speeds to purify uranium for use in power plants or weapons. Analysts and diplomats say that if Iran runs many advanced centrifuges, this could shorten its breakout time to back under a year again.

Liberman:’ISIS, Gaza militants, Iran nuclear negotiators, do not give Israel a second thought’
 By JPOST.COM STAFF/07/04/2015/A day after the Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate claimed responsibility for launching rockets at Israel, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman said Israel’s ability to deter its enemies has suffered. “It’s not important if the Grad rockets that landed in the South yesterday were launched by Salafists in Gaza or by ISIS in Sinai,” the former foreign minister said at a cultural event in Beersheba on Saturday. “From the time of Israel’s establishment there were always threats; once it is Hezbollah, once Hamas and the names of the threats just change every time,” Liberman said. “What has changed for the worse are not the threats but the damage to Israel’s ability to deter that has suffered mainly since the end of Operation Protective Edge,” Liberman added, referring to last summer’s 50 day military campaign with Hamas and other Islamist groups in Gaza. “The damage to Israel’s deterrence means that Israel is not given a second thought by ISIS, in the negotiations with Iran in Vienna, and in Gaza,” he added. Liberman, whose party decided in May not to join the ruling government coalition, has criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the past for not dealing a strong enough blow to Hamas during Operation Protective Edge. “It is simply unfathomable that every two years we need to conduct another military operation,” he said. “If we want to change this so that we can live here in quiet, we need to alter the balance of terror vis-à-vis our enemies. We need to make clear to them that whoever acts against us won’t find themselves in an underground bunker but in an underground grave. After the Hezbollah attack, we should’ve responded the way the Jordanians did against Islamic State,” Liberman said in February.