Iran’s Chief Negotiator: No Nuclear Deal Likely Before Elections

Iran’s chief negotiator at the nuclear talks in Vienna, which resumed on Saturday, said that he did not think that a deal could be completed before the country’s presidential election on June 18. Iranians go to the polls on June 18.

Also on Saturday, the Russian negotiator in Vienna said that it would take a few more weeks to arrive at the final wording for an agreement.

“I don’t think we will be able to reach a final conclusion in Vienna this week,” top Iranian negotiator Abbas Araqchi told Iranian state media.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who signed the original nuclear deal, cannot run in the presidential election due to term limits. Most of the candidate for Friday’s upcoming elections are viewed as hard-liners.

Representatives of the world powers currently are meeting in Vienna for the sixth round of negotiations aimed at bringing Iran and the United States back into the nuclear deal struck in 2015. The United States left the agreement in 2018, after which Iran began violating its regulations, specifically enriching uranium to levels much higher than the agreement allows and getting closer to the purity required to manufacture a nuclear weapon.