Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is leaving the talks in Lausanne, Switzerland this afternoon and will return to Moscow but is ready to return if the P5+1 and Iran come to terms for a framework agreement.
Analysts are speculating that Foreign Minister Lavrov’s exit is a sign that no deal is imminent, but every opinion is up for grabs in what has become the center stage of an act that would put the world’s best novelist, Broadway producer or circus master to shame.
With all due respect to the experts who have at least a thousand words to say every time someone burps in Lausanne, only a master of evil can figure what is going in the mischievous and evil minds of Iran and Russia, one of the P5+1 powers and which has a vested interest in Iran’s nuclear development.
A Russian spokesman said that Lavrov “is ready to come back as soon as needed.”
However, his deputy will remain in Lausanne while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the foreign ministers of the other four Western powers face off against Iran towards tomorrow night’s deadline, which was set by President Barack Obama for a framework agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program.
After a one hour and 14 minute meeting this morning, new talks have been scheduled for 8:30 p.m., five hours later than previously planned.
Obama has said there will be no extension, but if Kerry and his colleagues see the possibility of a deal a day or two after the deadline, the president very likely would go back on his word.
Key issues dividing the two sides apparently are when sanctions would be removed and how much research and development Iran can continue.
