With just six days before the deadline, Iran's nuclear talks seem to be faltering as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Vienna on Sunday. 
 
 Kerry had his work cut out for him. As he worked to mend ties with Germany in its espionage dispute with the U.S. and handle the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza, Kerry also took on face-to-face meetings with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif with a ticking clock behind them. By the day's end, no breakthrough had been produced and representatives from the six countries negotiating with Iran said that big hurdles remained. 
 
 The expiration of the interim deal 
 
 After decades of tense relations and mistrust, Iran and the United States (as part of the P5+1 Group) surprised the world by managing to secure an interim deal last fall that would ease sanctions on the Islamic Republic in exchange for suspending work on its nuclear program. July 20 was the date set for the deal to expire. And here we are. 
 
 While there have been some slight hints that discussions could extend beyond the deadline, the P5+1 group seems keen on getting a deal done by July 20. 
 
 As the Associated Press noted: 
 
 Lower-ranking officials represented both Russia and China, possibly reflecting their view even before Sunday that talks past July 20 are unavoidable. But Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested any extension would be relatively short, saying "there is not much willingness" by either side to go a full six months. He, too, earlier spoke of "huge and deep differences." 
 
 "There is a huge gap" 
 
 As reported, several gaps remain between the six countries and Iran, including major questions about the level to which Iran can enrich its uranium. Today, things got interesting. 
 
 Word started to spread about a speech given several thousand miles east of Vienna, in which Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei emphasized the need for Iran to enrich its uranium capacity at the very moment that the Iranian nuclear delegation and the P5+1 Group were bargaining to reduce it. 
 
 As the news broke, the words "scuttle" and "undermine" began floating: 
 
 Basically looks like Khamenei cut Zarif and co at the knees: http://t.co/9CMVgKD6dX — Jordan Hirsch (@jordanchirsch) July 14, 2014 
 
 Classic Khamenei: 1) Express support for negotiations 2) Undermine negotiators by setting impossible red lines. http://t.co/7dhb5BIzO9 — Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) July 14, 2014 
 
 Does Iran want a deal? 
 
 Are these negotiating tactics or reluctance? As Gerald Seib points out (paywall), while the U.S.-led sanctions imposed by the international community had a pretty devastating bite, all the jockeying in Vienna is for naught if Iran doesn't want a deal: 
 
 But there is a difference between wanting a deal and considering one essential. Would economic relief be simply convenient, or does Iran consider failure to achieve it an existential threat to the regime? The negotiations won't succeed unless Iran wants a deal more than its international interlocutors do. And there's probably no way to know for sure exactly how much urgency Iran attaches to a deal until talks reach their 11th hour. 
 
 We'll find out soon enough. ||||| Austrian President Heinz Fischer (L) receives Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, in front of a portrait of former Empress Maria Theresia, in his office in Vienna February 18, 2014. 
 
 VIENNA Six world powers and Iran began "substantive" talks on Tuesday in pursuit of a final settlement on Tehran's contested nuclear program in the coming months despite caveats from both sides that a breakthrough deal may prove impossible. 
 
 Senior U.S. and Iranian officials met separately for 80 minutes on the sidelines of the negotiations in Vienna. 
 
 Details were not given, but such bilateral talks were inconceivable before the 2013 election of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, as president of Iran. U.S.-Iranian dialogue is seen as crucial to any breakthrough nuclear agreement. 
 
 "The conversation was productive and focused mainly on how the comprehensive talks will proceed from here," a senior U.S. State Department official said on condition of anonymity after Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman's meeting with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. 
 
 Sherman headed the U.S. delegation, while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Araqchi led Tehran's negotiating team at the table with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. 
 
 After Sherman's meeting with Araqchi, the Iranians met on Tuesday evening with all six powers to continue talks on how to approach future negotiations, diplomats said. The discussions will resume on Wednesday roughly at 10:30 a.m. and could run into Thursday. 
 
 "Much of the first day was focused on discussions about process for how the comprehensive talks will proceed," a senior U.S. official said. "We made clear that every issue is on the table as part of the comprehensive negotiations, and now it's time to dig into the details and get to work." 
 
 In the evening session between Iran and the six "substantive issues began to be discussed", the U.S. official added. 
 
 A European diplomat said no decisions had been taken yet on how the talks will proceed in the future - the six powers led by the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton want to get a deal done within six months. 
 
 "We had quite detailed discussions, productive and in a positive atmosphere," the diplomat said. "But this is day one and we have at least another day." 
 
 COMPLEX PROCESS AHEAD 
 
 The Americans and Iranians have played down expectations. 
 
 Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man with the final say on all matters of state in the Islamic Republic, declared again on Monday that the talks "will not lead anywhere" - while also reiterating that he did not oppose the delicate diplomacy with the six world powers. 
 
 Hours later a senior U.S. administration official also tamped down expectations, telling reporters on Monday that it will be a "complicated, difficult and lengthy process" and "probably as likely that we won't get an agreement as it is that we will". 
 
 It is the first round of high-level negotiations since a November 24 interim deal that, halting a decade-long slide towards outright conflict, has seen Tehran curb some nuclear activities for six months in return for limited relief from sanctions to allow time for a long-term agreement to be hammered out. 
 
 The stakes are huge. If successful, the negotiations could help defuse many years of hostility between energy-exporting Iran and the West, ease the danger of a new war in the Middle East, transform power relationships in the region and open up vast new possibilities for Western businesses. 
 
 Araqchi sounded upbeat about the initial 40-minute discussions with the six nations but appeared to draw a line against Tehran's ballistic missile program being addressed in any future talks. 
 
 "We had good discussions ... and we are trying to set an agenda. If we can agree on an agenda in the next two to three days, it means we have taken the first step. And we will move forward based on that agenda," he said. "This agenda ... will be about Iran's nuclear program and nothing else, nothing except Iran's nuclear activities can be discussed." 
 
 He was answering a question about Iran's ballistic missile work after U.S. officials said they want Tehran to accept limitations on any nuclear-capable missile technology as part of any long-term deal reached by Iran and the powers. 
 
 There may be other sticking points in the talks. Iran says it will not cede its "right" to install advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium, signaling defiance in a manner that may irk the United States and its European allies. 
 
 Despite his public skepticism about chances for a lasting accord, Khamenei made clear Tehran was committed to continuing the negotiations between Iran and the six powers. 
 
 "What our officials started will continue. We will not renege. I have no opposition," he told a crowd in the northern city of Tabriz on Monday to chants of "Death to America" - a standard refrain since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 
 
 Western diplomats said it was difficult to predict the chances of getting a final agreement over the next six months that would be acceptable to all sides. "The one thing we know is they want the sanctions to go away, which will work in our favor," a Western diplomat told Reuters. 
 
 During a decade of fitful dialogue with world powers, Iran has rejected allegations by Western countries that it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability. It says it is enriching uranium only for electricity generation and medical purposes. 
 
 Tehran has defied U.N. Security Council demands that it halt enrichment and other proliferation-sensitive activities, leading to a crippling web of U.S., EU and U.N. sanctions that has severely damaged the OPEC country's economy. 
 
 Khamenei's approval of serious negotiations with the six powers despite the skepticism he shares with hardline conservative supporters is driven by Iran's worsening economic conditions, analysts say. 
 
 Another major factor was the overwhelming election last year of Rouhani, who is determined to relieve Tehran's international isolation based on "constructive interaction" with the West. 
 
 CURBING ENRICHMENT 
 
 The goal of the talks for the United States and its European allies is to extend the time that Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. 
 
 For that goal to be achieved, experts and diplomats say, Iran would have to limit enrichment to a low concentration of fissile purity, deactivate most of its centrifuges now devoted to such work, curb nuclear research to ensure it has solely civilian applications and submit to more intrusive monitoring by U.N. anti-proliferation inspectors. 
 
 Khamenei and other Iranian officials have often made clear that they could not accept any such cuts in nuclear capacities. The trick will be devising compromises that powerful constituencies on both sides can live with. 
 
 Western governments appear to have given up on the demand, made in a series of Security Council resolutions since 2006, that Iran should totally halt the most disputed aspects of its program - all activities related to uranium enrichment at the underground Natanz and Fordow plants and production of plutonium at the planned Arak heavy water reactor. 
 
 Diplomats privately acknowledge that the nuclear program is now too far advanced, and too much a cornerstone of Iran's national pride, for Tehran to agree to scrap it entirely. 
 
 But while Iran may keep a limited enrichment capacity, the West will insist on guarantees that mean any attempt to build a nuclear bomb would take long enough for it to be detected and stopped, possibly with military action. 
 
 Israel, which called the November deal a "historic mistake" because it did not dismantle its arch-enemy's enrichment program, made its position clear ahead of the Vienna talks. 
 
 "We are giving a chance for (a) diplomatic solution on condition that it provides a comprehensive and satisfactory solution that doesn't leave Iran with a nuclear breakout capability," Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said. 
 
 "In other words, that it doesn't leave (Iran) with a system ... that would permit it to remain close to a bomb," Steinitz he told Israeli radio. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Justyna Pawlak and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna, Allyn Fisher in Jerusalem; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Alison Williams and Mohammad Zargham) ||||| Iran’s supreme leader is often opaque in his pronouncements on the Islamic Republic’s dealings with foreign powers. That’s why many observers deemed significant the unmistakably supportive tone of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Feb. 8 comments on the matter in a speech to Air Force cadets as multilateral nuclear negotiations approach an end-of-March deadline for the framework of a deal. 
 
 "I would go along with any agreement that could be made,” Khamenei said. Echoing U.S. President Barack Obama, Iran’s key executive decision-maker added, “Of course, I am not for a bad deal.” But then he agreed with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that “negotiations mean reaching a common point ... This means that one side would not end up getting all it wants.” 
 
 To Western ears attuned to Khamenei’s chronic skepticism, the remarks were, for the first time, more positive than negative and suggested he was preparing his hard-line political base for a landmark deal with the “Great Satan.” 
 
 Pessimists were quick to point out that Khamenei made other remarks that could constrain negotiators, such as calling for a single-phase “detailed” agreement and swift removal of sanctions. The goal of the P5+1 group of world powers that negotiates with Iran — the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia — has been to agree a political framework by the end of March. The technical details would be fully fleshed out in a second agreement by the end of June, whose implementation would be tied to a gradual easing of sanctions against Tehran. 
 
 It could be the case that Khamenei, by publicly signaling a willingness to compromise, hopes to win the blame game if no deal is reached. But the woeful state of Iran’s economy — exacerbated by low oil prices — and the enormous desire among ordinary Iranians for an improvement in living standards and better ties with the West, creates pressure on Tehran to accept ceilings on its nuclear activities for at least a decade in exchange for sanctions relief — and, potentially, a significant shift in Iran’s relationship with the United States. 
 
 Comments by Obama this week — and the marathon negotiations that have been taking place in Europe, including two more meetings last weekend between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif — also suggest that the two sides are closing in on a deal. 
 
 Speaking at a joint press conference on Feb. 9 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama said, “The issues now are sufficiently narrowed and sufficiently clarified where we’re at point where they need to make a decision.” If, as Khamenei has stated, “it would be contrary to their faith to obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama continued, “there should be the possibility of getting a deal. They should be able to get to yes.” 
 
 Rouhani, who with Zarif has spearheaded the negotiation process, has also been sending optimistic signals. He recently equated a nuclear deal with the kind of painful compromise made by the leader of Iran’s revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in accepting a cease-fire in the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War. Khomeini called accepting that truce “like drinking from the poisoned chalice,” but he did so nonetheless, giving up his goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who had attacked Iran, because Iran was economically prostrate and continuing the war threatened the survival of the Islamic regime. Khamenei — who mentioned the 1988 cease-fire in his own speech — could use the “poisoned chalice” precedent to justify making concessions as well. 
 
 On Wednesday in a major address, Rouhani again spoke of a “win-win agreement in which Iran will show transparency in its peaceful nuclear activities.” He reminded listeners of Iran’s important role in the region fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and sought to tamp down domestic opposition to compromise by pointing out that only “Iran’s enemies” are opposed to a nuclear deal. 
 
 The U.S. has reportedly put forward several formulas for curbing Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity and stockpiles in a way that would ensure that it would take at least one year for Iran to repurpose its nuclear infrastructure to produce enough fissile material for a single nuclear bomb — a switch that current inspection protocols would quickly detect. 
 
 Perhaps the strongest indication that an agreement with Iran may be closer than ever is the increasingly desperate effort by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block one. The Israeli leader opposes the premise of the compromise agreement being negotiated between Iran and the P5+1, which involves Iran accepting verifiable limits on its nuclear work that go beyond those required by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for at least a decade but keeping intact much of its nuclear infrastructure under enhanced international scrutiny. Netanyahu insists that Iran can’t be allowed to have enrichment technology permitted under the NPT, because that could be diverted to create bomb materiel. That view was once shared by Western powers but is now seen as a nonstarter by the governments negotiating with Iran. 
 
 Netanyahu plans to address a joint session of Congress on March 3, despite many Democrats’ threatening to boycott the speech and mounting concern among mainstream U.S. Jewish leaders over the partisan impact of the event, after Republican House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu without clearing it with the White House — a breach of protocol. 
 
 Iran’s leaders could wrong-foot Netanyahu by announcing acceptance of a deal shortly before his speech on Capitol Hill. 
 
 But even if negotiations take a while longer to conclude, U.S.-Iran relations have progressed to the point that Netanyahu’s habitual rejectionism — like Iranians’ ritual chants of “Death to America” — have become anachronistic in the eyes of a growing pragmatic consensus in both Tehran and the West. Since the conclusion of an interim nuclear agreement in 2013, there has been a de facto truce between the U.S. and Iran on a number of issues besides Iran’s nuclear program, and it appears unlikely now that relations will revert to the hostility that prevailed before Rouhani succeeded President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 
 
 Jim Slattery, a former six-term Congressman from Kansas who late last year became the first former or serving member of Congress to visit Iran, told the Atlantic Council on Monday that a majority of Iranians he encountered want a nuclear deal and a better relationship with the United States. 
 
 Even the officer who stamped Slattery’s passport when he arrived in Tehran was optimistic, Slattery recalled, telling him, “I hope you guys can get this nuclear thing worked out so we can meet some American women.”
– A Sunday deadline is looming for Iran to strike a nuclear deal with six world powers under a plan set in motion last year—but with just days to go, Iran's supreme leader has made the chances of a deal being forged in time look supremely unlikely. In a major speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country will need 190,000 centrifuge machines, 19 times as many as the 10,000 negotiators from the US, France, Britain, Russia, China, and Germany want to limit the country to in order to reduce its capacity to build nuclear weapons. After the leader's speech appeared to undermine negotiators, analysts began to wonder whether Iran really wants a deal that would limit its nuclear capacity in return for the lifting of sanctions, or if Khamenei is playing for time, the Atlantic notes. "In ostensibly expressing support for the Iranian negotiating team, close scrutiny of Khamenei's speech shows that in reality his remarks were aimed at severely curtailing his team's room for maneuver, making it effectively impossible to bridge gaps with the stance" of the six powers, an intelligence analysis seen by Reuters states. If all sides agree, the talks could be extended for another six months, though US officials say they will need to see some progress in the days to come before they will agree to an extension. John Kerry joined the talks in Vienna yesterday, but it's not clear whether he made any progress during hours of talks with Iran's foreign minister; issues including Afghanistan were also discussed, the AP reports.