What's holding up Iran nuclear deal?

Iran and the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany — failed to reach a final deal on Iran's nuclear program before the Nov. 24, 2014, deadline. However, they agreed in Vienna to a new March 2015 deadline for a political agreement and a final agreement (inclusive of annexes) by July 1. The next round of talks is scheduled for mid-January.

Informed European sources told me that the negotiators were on the verge of announcing a political agreement in Vienna, but it was blocked for apparently unknown reasons. US Secretary of State John Kerry said: "In recent weeks, we have seen new ideas surface, flexibility emerge, that could, I repeat, could help resolve some issues, that had been intractable." Interestingly enough, just a few days after the November marathon talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that “Israel had a critical role in stopping a deal with Iran.”

Back in 2011, on the sidelines of a conference in Europe, a former Israeli official told an Iranian envoy — one of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ambassadors — that in the absence of Israel’s consent, Iran would not be able to reach a deal with the world powers. The same was publicly stated by the Israeli prime minister in December 2014: "Even though Israel isn't part of the P5+1, our voice and our concerns played a critical role in preventing a bad deal."

In December 2013, Gary Samore, former adviser on the Iran nuclear issue under President Barack Obama and president of United Against Nuclear Iran, an American advocacy organization reflecting Israeli interests, told me at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain that the most likely outcome of another six months of negotiations would be another “interim agreement,” not a final comprehensive agreement. Moreover, he predicted that a “process of rolling interim agreements” could last through the remainder of Obama’s second term.