Iran and six world powers will meet again after their present talks on Tehran's nuclear program and other issues end, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said Thursday .
The announcement came in the closing minutes of Thursday's talks during which the big-powers attempted to persuade Tehran to freeze a program that could create nuclear weapons.
A decision to meet again is significant. The last such seven-nation talks before Thursday's gathering occurred more than a year ago and ended in failure.
The U.S. didn't push for sanctions. As I reported earlier, the administration wouldn't have even pushed for sanctions even if Iran refused to allow the IAEA to visit the recently discovered nuclear site.
Major Garrett just reported that the administration wants to establish a diplomatic "framework". Then, according the Garrett, the administration can keep sanctions in their "back pocket". Sanctions haven't been defined and both Russia and China wouldn't be on board with sanctions now. Many, like me, would argue that they would never be on board with sanctions. At this point, if they haven't been convinced that Iran is up to no good nothing is going to convince them.
So, we are at the beginning of another dance. The parties have agreed to meet again. According to one diplomat, that meeting will happen sometime before the end of October. In the meantime, all sides will present an outline of issues up for discussion at the next meeting.
What none of the diplomats talked about is the running clock until Iran gets a nuclear bomb. It's entirely unclear how that clock compares to the diplomatic clock the world is currently on with diplomatic negotiations. We can only hope the diplomatic clock is ticking more quickly than the nuclear clock, however all evidence is that it is reversed.
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