WarSclerotic

Negotiators planned to announce Monday that they have reached a historic deal capping nearly a decade of diplomacy that would curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief, two diplomats told The Associated Press on Sunday.

The envoys cautioned that final details of the pact were still being ironed out. Once it is complete, a formal, final agreement would be open to review by officials in the capitals of Iran and the six world powers at the talks, they said.

“We are working hard, but a deal tonight is simply logistically impossible,” an Iranian official said Sunday, noting that the agreement will run roughly 100 pages.

A senior U.S. official declined to speculate as to the timing of any agreement or announcement but said “major issues remain to be resolved.”

Despite the caution, the negotiators appeared to be on the cusp of an agreement.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Thursday had threatened to walk away from the negotiations, said Sunday that “a few tough things” remained in the way, but added, “We’re getting to some real decisions.”

En route to Mass at Vienna’s Gothic St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Kerry said twice he was “hopeful” after a “very good meeting” Saturday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who attended Muslim services Friday. The two met again early Saturday evening.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also was cautiously optimistic, telling reporters Sunday: “I hope that we are finally entering the last phase of this negotiation.”

In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani said an agreement was close, but not quite done, describing the negotiations as “still steps away from reaching the intended peak.”

Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other foreign ministers held a dinner Sunday night. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived overnight, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The other foreign ministers of the six nations negotiating with Iran already are in or are planning to arrive in the Austrian capital and in position to join Kerry and Zarif for an announcement.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon warned on Monday against what he called a “bad deal” with Iran.

Speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee hours before the deal was anticipated to be finalized, Ya’alon said that “at the bottom line, we are headed toward a bad deal, after which we will continue to be ready to defend ourselves, by ourselves.”

“The deal that is taking shape in Vienna will affect our diplomatic-security status more than anything else, and as we understand it, it will be signed very soon,” Ya’alon said.

“Even if there are last-minute improvements, it will still be a bad deal that will allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state, with everything that entails.

“The agreement in effect launders everything that Iran has done, contrary to the Security Council resolution. Neighboring countries are now talking about their own need to arm themselves, which could spark a nuclear arms race in the region. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey are talking about it. Not to mention the fact that the agreement doesn’t require [Iran] to decommission even a single nuclear facility or destroy even a single centrifuge.”

Ya’alon outlined the issues “that should not only alarm us, but anyone who seeks stability in the Middle East and in the world: the fact that the Iranian missile project was not discussed or that the Iranian terrorist activity — activity directed against us like their support for Hezbollah — was not discussed; the funding of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza; the dissemination of rocket manufacturing instructions, or the attempt to launch attacks on us from the Golan Heights, as we saw at the beginning of the year.”

A day earlier, Ya’alon said that “Iran is a merciless, bloody regime that disseminates global terror, undermining the foundations of the free world. This agreement will be a historic mistake.”

Also on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that the emerging nuclear deal “endangers the peace of the entire world.”

To highlight the dangers of the deal, Netanyahu showed ministers a 1994 video of then-U.S. President Bill Clinton announcing a nuclear deal with North Korea, which ultimately produced nuclear weapons. Netanyahu’s hint was clear — a deal with Iran now would prove to be as worthless as the deal with North Korea two decades ago.

Movement toward a deal with Iran has been marked by years of tough negotiations. The pact is meant to impose long-term, verifiable limits on nuclear programs that Iran could modify to produce weapons. Iran, in return, would get tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief.

The current round of nuclear talks is now in its 16th day and has been extended three times since the first deadline of June 30 was missed. The mood among negotiators had turned more somber each time a new target date — first July 7, then July 10 and then July 13 — was set.

As the weekend approached, Kerry declared the talks could not go on indefinitely and warned that the U.S. could walk away from the negotiations.

Diplomats familiar with the talks said most of the nuts and bolts of implementing the deal have been agreed upon. But over the past week, issues that were previously on the back burner have led to new disputes. Among them is Iran’s demand for a lifting of a U.N. arms embargo and its insistence that any U.N. Security Council resolution approving the nuclear deal be written in a way that stops describing Iran’s nuclear activities as illegal.

A diplomat familiar with the negotiations said disagreements also persist on how long some of the restrictions on imports of nuclear technology and other embargoes outlined in any new Security Council resolution will last. The diplomat, who demanded anonymity because of not being allowed to discuss the confidential talks, said restrictions would last for years, not months.

Iranians were preparing to celebrate in the event of an agreement. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reported that deputy police chief Brig. Gen. Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi said the authorities are fully prepared for such celebrations.

Despite Kerry’s relatively upbeat take, comments by Iran’s supreme leader suggested that Iran’s hostility toward the U.S. would persist no matter the outcome of the talks.

Iran’s state-run Press TV cited Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday as calling the U.S. an “excellent example of arrogance.” It said Khamenei told university students in Tehran to be “prepared to continue the struggle against arrogant powers.”