TROUBLE IN VIENNA – AT 11:15 A.M. ET:  Only seven days remain to the current deadline for achieving a nuclear deal with Iran.  Things are not going well.  From The New York Times: 

VIENNA — A senior Obama administration official said Saturday that Iran continues to take “inadequate and unworkable” positions on the future of its nuclear program, and warned that the country would have to live with sharp limits on its ability to produce nuclear fuel for at least a decade, and perhaps longer.

The comments, made to reporters here just hours before Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to arrive with European foreign ministers, strongly suggested that a comprehensive deal would not be closed by a July 20 deadline.

Although the goal of the weekend negotiations is to try to push Iran to make political decisions that American officials say it has resisted, the Obama administration is refusing to discuss extending the talks — which is possible under a preliminary agreement reached late last year — for fear that would reduce the pressure to make progress over the next week.

The official, who is centrally involved in the negotiations, spoke to a large group of reporters on the standard diplomatic condition of anonymity. The official said that some progress had been made on several areas of the negotiations. While there were no specifics, European officials have said that major gaps have been closed on the future of a plutonium reactor under construction near the Iranian city of Arak, and on the fate of a deep underground nuclear-enrichment center that was discovered by Western intelligence agencies and that President Obama said four years ago needed to be closed.

But the central sticking point remains differing views on the future of Iran’s program.

In a speech in Iran five days ago, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, talked of a long-term plan for a tenfold increase in Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability, saying the country’s scientists have determined that would be the only way to satisfy Iran’s need for nuclear power. The comments worried American and European officials, because they suggested the religious leader was not preparing the Iranian people for cutbacks in the country’s existing number of centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium. It currently has about 10,000 enriching uranium, and another 9,000 set up but not in full operation.

COMMENT:  It's a fantasy to believe that Iran would give up its nuclear weapons program, which it even denies it has.  Iran is facing a weak America, and cynical European countries, like Germany, whose main interest is in business contracts with Tehran. 

I suspect the current negotiations will be extended past the deadline, possibly way past the deadline.  And every month that goes by means more progress by Iranian scientists and engineers.  They don't need to manufacture a weapon.  They need only to reach the point where they can "break out" quickly to make the bomb.  Remember – we tested our first nuclear device in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, and used an operational bomb on Hiroshima on August 6th, only three weeks later. 

Obama has essentially taken the military option off the table in dealing with Iran's nuclear program.  That was a major strategic mistake.  It has given Iran breathing room, and Iran has taken it.

July 13,  2014