Agencies/Vienna

Iran said it would resist Western pressure to make what it considered to be excessive concessions in nuclear talks that started yesterday, highlighting obstacles that could prevent a historic deal being reached by a November 24 deadline.
US Secretary of State John Kerry declined to make any predictions for what he called a “critical week”, during which negotiators from Iran and six world powers will push to end a 12-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme and dispel fears of a new Middle East war.
After nearly a year of diplomacy, they aim to reach a comprehensive settlement at the talks in Vienna that would curb Iran’s atomic activities in return for a phasing out of sanctions that have severely hurt its oil-dependent economy.
However, Iranian and Western officials have said next Monday’s self-imposed deadline is unlikely to be met, and an extension is the most likely outcome. They say it is possible to agree the outline of a future accord, but it would take months to work out the details.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif met former European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who is co-ordinating the negotiations, over lunch in the Austrian capital yesterday.
“The talks with Ashton were good and reaching a deal depends on the political will of the other side,” Iran’s official Irna news agency quoted Zarif as saying.
It was followed by other meetings, including one between all the seven states involved as well as bilateral US-Iranian discussions, a senior US official said.
“This is a very critical week,” Kerry said on a visit to London. “It’s imperative, obviously, that Iran work with us in all possible efforts to prove to the world the (nuclear) programme is peaceful.”
His British counterpart, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, expressed cautious optimism. “I believe a deal can be done,” he said after meeting Kerry. But, “Iran needs to show more flexibility if we are to succeed.”
The outcome of the negotiations could have far-reaching implications in the wider Middle East as well as in the United States and Iran, where hardliners are sceptical of a rapprochement.
The six states—France, China, Russia, Germany, the United States and Britain—want Iran to scale back its capacity to refine uranium so that it would take much longer to produce fissile material for a bomb if it wanted to.
Tehran says it is enriching uranium only to make fuel for nuclear power plants and that this is its sovereign right.
“We are here to find a solution that respects the Iranian nation’s rights and removes the legitimate concerns of the international community,” Zarif said after arriving in Vienna. He made clear that Iran would be “resisting excessive demands”.   
At present Iran could use its existing infrastructure to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb in a few months, although any such “breakout” attempt would be detected very quickly.
And Iran wants to ramp up massively the number of enrichment centrifuges in order, it says, to make fuel for a fleet of future reactors.
The West wants the number of centrifuges slashed, saying Iran has no such need at present, something that would extend the “breakout” period to at least a year.
Other thorny issues are the duration of the accord and the pace at which sanctions are lifted, an area where Iranian expectations are “excessive”, one Western diplomat said.
Given the differences, many analysts expect more time to be put on the clock.
“There is virtually no possibility that a complete deal will be concluded by November 24,” former top US diplomat Robert Einhorn, now an expert with the Brookings Institution, said, predicting another extension of “several more months”.
The alternative—walking away—would be “catastrophic,” Arms Control Association analyst Kelsey Davenport said.
“Given the political capital that both sides have invested... it would be foolish to walk away from the talks and throw away this historic opportunity,” Davenport said.
For now though, with another extension presenting risks of its own—fresh US sanctions, not least—officials insist that they remain focused on the deadline.  
“An extension is not and has not been a subject of conversation at this point,” a senior US official said late Monday.