The pressure increases on Secretary of State John Kerry over failure to secure a deal during this week's historic nuclear talks with Iran.
After working for a year without any sort of outward progress, some wonder if Kerry's style of diplomacy is not working, even as talks were extended Monday for another seven months,
Politico reports.
While the Obama administration and Kerry continue to hope for a future agreement — which Kerry described in recent days as "real and substantial progress" that would limit Iran's development of nuclear weapons amid world sanctions — the call for patience is wearing thin, Politico noted.
"It is difficult to square the comments of Kerry and others that progress was made this week, and they are close to a final deal, with the need for seven more months of negotiations," one former White House official told Politico.
Whether having such world powers as China and Russia involved in recent months of negotiations will help to bolster a deal remains unclear.
The New York Times, in a story assessing the Vienna meetings, described waning progress in a Monday headline as "a nuclear deal for U.S. and Iran slips away."
"If anything, the last few weeks underscored a larger conclusion about the negotiations: If the deal had been left to Mr. Kerry and [Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad] Zarif, and to their respective teams, it probably would have happened," wrote the Times.
"The two men have developed a strong working relationship, and the flare-up in Oman a couple weeks ago underscored how much each wanted to get to a deal but could not. In the end, both were constrained by hardline politics at home."
Kerry has appealed to U.S. lawmakers to back off and give negotiators more time on Iran, a tactic that has drawn skepticism from Republicans,
National Public Radio noted.
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