The head of Iran's delegation to nuclear negotiations in Vienna, Abbas Araghchi, said on Sunday that talks surrounding Washington's return to the original nuclear deal were being put on hold and that the respective delegations were returning home.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
"We are now closer than ever to a deal, but there is still a gap between the sides before final agreements can be reached, and it won't be easy to narrow these gaps. We will return to Tehran as early as [Sunday night]," Araghchi told Iranian state-run media.
"The sides need to return to their capitals for consultations but also to decide on new policy," he responded when asked about Iran's new hard-line President-elect Ebrahim Raisi.
Raisi is under US sanctions over a past which includes what the United States and human rights groups say was the extrajudicial killing of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. He has never publicly addressed such allegations.
"There will be a somewhat of a break in the talks and I don't know how long it will take [to return]," Araghchi added.
Two Western diplomats said they expected a break of around 10 days.
Araghchi also said the ball was in the Americans' court. "Bridging the existing gap in the negotiations requires decisions that mostly the other side needs to make; I hope that in the next round of talks we will be able to bridge the short distance between our positions," he said.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday: "There is still a fair distance to travel on some of the key issues, including on sanctions and on the nuclear commitments that Iran has to make."
"We will see if the Iranian negotiators come to the next round of talks prepared to make hard choices that they have to make," Sullivan said.
Senior Iranian officials said the new government in Tehran intends to keep the delegation to the nuclear talks intact, at least for a few more months. "Who Raisi picks as his foreign minister will reveal the new government's foreign policy approach. With that, [Iran's] nuclear strategy is determined by the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] and not by the governments," a senior Iranian official said.
Asked if Raisi's election increased the chances of a deal, Sullivan said the ultimate decision was with Khamenei. "He was the same person before this election as he is after the election, so ultimately it lies with him and his decision," he said.
Still, some Iranian officials have suggested that Tehran could have an interest in pushing through an agreement before the new president takes office in August, to give Raisi a clean slate.
An Iranian government official close to the talks told Reuters that if a deal is finalized before Raisi takes office in August, the new president will be able to deflect blame for any concessions onto his predecessor: "[Hassan] Rouhani, not Raisi, will be blamed for any future problems regarding the deal," he said.
Josep Borrell, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said Sunday that an agreement was "very close" and could make the Middle East safer and bring relief to millions of Iranians hit by oil and financial sanctions.
"On these negotiations, we are running out of time," Borrell told a group of journalists in Beirut.
The EU is also a party to the talks between Iran and world powers: the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.
Iran's decision to pause the talks is welcome news from Israel's perspective, as it buys more time for the country's diplomatic-defense echelon to try influencing the decision-making process in Washington. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi was heading to the US to meet with senior American defense officials.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the purpose of Kochavi's work trip to the US was to "advance strategic matters that I began working on during my meetings in Washington. We will continue working together on behalf of Israel's security."
On Sunday new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said a Raisi government would be a "regime of brutal hangmen" with which world powers should not negotiate a new nuclear accord.
With the Vienna talks on pause, attention will now turn to extending a separate accord between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which expires on June 24. Iran has ended extra monitoring measures that were introduced under the 2015 deal.
EU political director Enrique Mora, who is coordinating the nuclear talks, said he expected an extension that would let data continue to be collected while placing limits on the IAEA's access to it for now.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
