From "The Wall Street Journal"

Iran, world powers plan to continue nuclear talks beyond June 30, says senior U.S. official

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WORLD
Iran Nuclear Deal Requires ‘Strong Political Will,’ Says Official
EU’s Federica Mogherini arrives in Vienna for talks ahead of June 30 deadline

ENLARGE
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini attends a signature ceremony between Colombia, Peru and the EU in Brussels on June 10.PHOTO: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
By
LAURENCE NORMANUpdated June 28, 2015 7:13 a.m. ET
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VIENNA—A nuclear deal for Iran is “tough” but doable, the European Union’s foreign policy chief said Sunday, as she arrived at the negotiations in Vienna ahead of the June 30 deadline.

Officials from both sides have already warned the talks may drag a few days past the deadline, as they scramble to resolve several important final points on the timing of sanctions relief for Iran and the strength of the monitoring regime Tehran must accept under a deal.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry rejoined the talks Saturday for the first time in a month, meeting for several hours with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also joined the discussions.

Iran is negotiating a deal with six powers—the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China.

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On Sunday morning, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, told reporters outside the Coburg Palais hotel, where the negotiations were taking place, that if there is “strong political will” on all sides “we can get there.”

“They are going to be tough,” she said of the talks. “It has always been tough but not impossible. As I said it’s a matter of political will.”

Ms. Mogherini, who chairs the six-power group, also said there is “flexibility” around the June 30 deadline if the two sides are closing in on a deal.

“If a few days more are needed, we can take them.”

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond also arrived Sunday.

“I have said many times before and I’ll say again today: No deal is better than a bad deal,” he said. “There are red lines which we cannot cross and some very difficult decisions.”

“There are a number of different areas where we still have major differences of interpretation in detailing what was agreed at Lausanne,” he added, referring to a framework agreement that was sealed in Switzerland on April 2.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and senior diplomats from China and Russia are expected in Vienna later Sunday.

The final nuclear agreement is meant to block any smooth Iranian path to nuclear weapons by committing to Tehran to tight inspections and concrete measures to wind back their nuclear program for 10 to 15 years.

In exchange, tight international sanctions on Iran’s finance, energy and commercial sectors will be phased out over time.

The Vienna talks build on the Lausanne framework agreement, setting out the main contours of a deal.

While many of those involved in the talks saw the April 2 framework agreement as a major step to solving more than a decade of diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear activities, the negotiations have grown tenser in recent weeks, say people involved in the talks.

Senior Iranian officials, including its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have emphasized a number of red lines that seem to depart from the Lausanne agreement.

Western officials say that, in the negotiating room, Iran has also seemed to draw back on commitments it made to ensure the United Nations atomic agency access to all suspect sites under a deal, including military sites.

As Iran has toughened its rhetoric around what it calls its red lines for a deal, critics of the diplomacy have expressed growing concerns about the shape of a likely deal.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that the world powers had withdrawn from the red lines they had laid down earlier in the talks.

“There is no reason to rush to sign this bad agreement, which gets worse each day,” he said. “It’s not too late to go back and insist on demands that will truly prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities.”

—Joshua Mitnick contributed to this article.

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com