Iran, US nuclear deal not going to happen as crowd chants ‘Death to America’

The United States may have good intentions, but Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who has the final say on all matters of state in the Islamic Republic, declared again on Monday that talks between Tehran and six world powers “will not lead anywhere.”

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Khamenei says discussions will continue, “What our officials started will continue. We will not renege. I have no opposition,” he told a crowd in the northern city of Tabriz on Monday to chants of “Death to America”.

If successful, the negotiations could help put an end to years of hostility between Iran and the West, ease the danger of a new war in the Middle East, and open up vast new possibilities for Western businesses.

A senior US administration official also played down expectations, telling reporters in Vienna that it will be a “complicated, difficult and lengthy process” and “probably as likely that we won’t get an agreement as it is that we will.”

The goal of the talks for the United States and its European allies is to extend the “breakout time” that Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a bomb.

For that goal to be achieved, experts and diplomats say, Iran would have to restrict enriching uranium to a low fissile concentration, stop most of its centrifuges now used for such work, limit nuclear research, and submit to highly intrusive monitoring by U.N. inspectors.

Khamenei and other Iranian officials have repeatedly made clear that such reductions of its nuclear capacities would be unacceptable.