US Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Geneva, November 2013. Photo: Wikicommons

JNS.org– The Nov. 24 deadline for negotiating a deal on Iran’s nuclear program expired on Monday, but world powers and the Islamic Republic are expected to continue talks next month.

“Given progress made this weekend, talks headed to likely extension with experts and negotiating teams reconvening in December at a yet-to-be-determined location,” an anonymous Western diplomat said in an email to Reuters.

The original interim deal between Iran and the P5+1 powers, reached in November 2013, led to an easing of some sanctions on Iran while a final deal is being negotiated. The Nov. 24 deadline was set through a four-month extension to the initially missed July 20 deadline for an agreement.

While world powers want to severely curtail Iran’s enrichment capability or have enriched fuel sent abroad for processing, Iran is seeking to retain its full ability to enrich uranium. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program. Many leading U.S. Republican legislators, ahead of their party’s forthcoming control of both houses of Congress in January, have expressed similar sentiments and have promised to block any “bad deal” with Iran that allows the country to retain enrichment capability.

Talks with world powers have been derailed by Iran’s refusal to cooperate with a probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a U.N.-affiliated nuclear watchdog. Iran had agreed to provide the IAEA with information on experiments with nuclear detonators, work on high-explosive charges used in nuclear blasts, and studies on the calculation of nuclear explosive yields. But the IAEA said this month that Iran has only provided information on the detonators.