Iran wants a clean slate

Iran has been playing hard to get ever since the Geneva talks resumed in 2009. The Obama administration, by contrast, has been quite frank in its approach, not hiding the fact that it would very much like to strike a deal. According to the U.S. media, the White House will likely describe such an agreement -- if and when it is finalized -- as President Barack Obama's most important foreign policy achievement. If this is the foreign policy equivalent of Obamacare -- the health care law the White House has touted Obama's signature domestic achievement -- then we should all be worried.

Iran and the international community have less than 24 hours left to shake hands. Just like five years ago in Geneva, there are intense talks, with both sides saying that the gaps are wide.

The talks have stalled over the fate of Iran's uranium enrichment program and the date at which the sanctions would be expire. Iran wants all sanctions -- those imposed by the U.N. Security Council, the EU and the U.S. Congress -- to be lifted on the spot. It would also like to maintain the same enrichment capacity and to build more reactors.

In short -- Iran would like a deal that would impose no restrictions on a nuclear program for civilian purposes -- hoping the world will somehow forget the deception it has engaged in over the past ten years.

The ayatollahs would like the Vienna talks to officially expunge their record. For Iran, a nuclear deal would amount to a certificate of good conduct. The way Iran sees it, if it returns to the fold, if it helps the West fight Islamic State, why should it face sanctions? According to sources in Vienna, Iran's negotiating team has had Kerry lose his cool. In fact, the sources say, the talks are on the verge of collapse because there are too many outstanding issues.

This is similar to how the Geneva talks unfolded several months ago. Things seemed to be unraveling just hours before the agreement was inked. Had the stakes not been so high -- we are talking about the threat posed by a nuclear Iran, after all -- this would have been the best show in town. So what does a bad deal mean for Israel? Is it going to be left to its own devices?

The Iranian media has actually been upbeat about the prospects of a deal, unlike Western outlets. The conventional wisdom is that negotiators are not going to return empty handed. Even if they fall short of a full-fledged accord, they will have been able to reach a framework agreement that would sidetrack the technical issues and essentially kick the can down the road

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Foreign Policy and National Security Committee of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, has told French daily Le Figaro that if the talks failed to produce a deal, "Iran would feel unbound when it comes to enriching uranium to the level of 20 percent (military grade), nor would it face any restrictions on the number of centrifuges it could operate and it would be able to resume the installation of a new generation of centrifuges." Iran has assumed this brazen posture because it believes the West desperately wants a deal.

This is what happens when you show the Iranians that your interest in a deal matches theirs. This is what happens when Iran feels it no longer has a knife to its throat.

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