Since Sunday, diplomats and experts from Iran and the US have launched a decisive round of diplomacy in Switzerland to pave the way for a landmark nuclear agreement between Tehran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany).
Negotiations are expected to run until March 20, before the start of the new Iranian year.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry have met several times over the past two days in Lausanne in an effort to bridge the gaps ahead of a June 30 deadline for a final accord.
The Iranian and American teams are expected to be joined later in the week by senior European officials and possibly foreign ministers, depending on how the talks develop.
Iran’s head negotiator, Zarif, said on Tuesday that political directors from Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are due to join the Lausanne talks to “help the discussions during the final days of this round of negotiations.”
Meanwhile, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi, who is engaged in intensive technical talks with US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, said in an interview on Tuesday they have managed to overcome differences on 90 percent of the issues in the course of talks.
“We have reached mutual understanding on a majority of issues, there just remains a single sticking point, which is very important,” Salehi told IRIB.
“If that one case could end in the desired result for the two sides, it could be said that more or less, the technical issues have been clarified in their entirety,” Salehi added.
Iran and the group of six countries are in talks to hammer out a final agreement to end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.