Foreign ministers from the six-power group is to join Iran's nuclear talks tomorrow, Friday, in an effort to break a stalemate and salvage a deal by the July 20 deadline, various western diplomats speculated Thursday.
Despite daily communication between the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, a permanent deal on the future of Tehran's nuclear program has not been reached yet eventhough the six-month deadline is coming to an end.
For the past eight days, talks behind closed doors have been held without any statements to the press regarding the "slow" progress of the negotiations.
Yesterday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Deputy Chief of EU Foreign Policy Helga Schmidt concluded their meetings on the final draft of the nuclear agreement.
Since July 2, negotiations have continued around the clock in the Austrian capital on a final, comprehensive nuclear deal, which would gradually lift tight international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for actions from Iran that would prevent it from quickly acquiring nuclear weapons.
US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns also engaged in these "intensive and difficult" negotiations.
Earlier this week, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech that the United States' goal at the nuclear talks is to convince Iran to limit its uranium enrichment capacity to 10,000 Separative Work Units (SWUs) while Tehran needs at least 190,000 SWUs.