VIENNA — A month before an interim nuclear deal expires, a diplomat from the six world powers gave a sobering assessment of the Iran final deal talks, noting that while there is progress on drafting “bits of the text” for a final deal, almost no major area of dispute between Iran and the P5+1 has been effectively settled yet. It’s possible that wide gaps on issues like the size of Iran’s enrichment program could close at the end, he said, but it’s not clear that they will.

“Progress has been made,” the P5+1 diplomat at the talks, speaking not for attribution, said here Thursday (June 19). “But we have not concluded a big element of the negotiations.”

Four days into this fifth round of final deal talks, “I am not more optimistic or pessimistic,” the diplomat said. “It’s simply very difficult to know whether we will get the result we need.”

On major points of dispute between Iran and the six world powers, negotiators have always known that any “movement will [likely] come at the end of this,” the diplomat said. “It could be done quickly. And so we hope that by setting out our positions clearly and firmly in some detail, we have cleared the decks for an intense process of discussion. We will see how that goes.“