Sixteen months of negotiations over Iran's nuclear future are about to draw to a close at the end of March. Then, all eyes will be on Secretary of State John Kerry to see if he will have anything to show for them.
Kerry is in Lausanne, Switzerland, spearheading an effort with the leaders of the U.S., China, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia to hammer out an agreement preventing Iran from producing weapons-grade nuclear material. In exchange, economic sanctions on Iran will slowly be lifted.
"This is the culmination of more than sixteen months of negotiations, really hard-fought, very intense, very technical," said Charles Sennott, co-founder of GlobalPost and head of The GroundTruth Project.
"How you actually get an agreement in which you can verify to the world community can be assured Iran is not going to be heading toward a weaponized program and staying only with a nuclear program that is peaceful—that's the whole enchilada," he continued.
The negotiations process has been dogged by a series of controversies. Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an impassioned speech before Congress against the negotiations, which was boycotted by President Obama and many Democrats. 47 Republican senators later sent an open letter to Iranian leaders warning that any deal would be overturned by the next Republican president.
But no matter what hiccups have plagued the process up until this point, Sennott says this final week may be one of the most crucial.
"What you can say is: they're in the absolute endgame," he said. "This is the final week. It comes together now, or it doesn't."
To hear more from Charles Sennott, tune in to Boston Public Radio above.
