Iran and the United States held a second day of talks on Monday in Oman about a long hoped for nuclear deal, with key differences threatening to scupper a final agreement.
With a November 24 deadline hanging over the negotiations, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are laying out their nations’ competing demands, but with no signs of a breakthrough.
As they first met in Muscat on Sunday, US President Barack Obama underlined the high stakes of the encounter, saying that a “big gap” remains on how the West can have “verifiable, lock-tight assurances” Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.