WASHINGTON — Iran's insistence that UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program be lifted at the front end of a final nuclear deal has emerged as an unexpected sticking point in the negotiations, diplomats say.
Western diplomats said if a final nuclear deal is reached, the United States and European Union would quickly waive and then lift unilateral, proliferation-related economic sanctions on Iran that would provide a rapid windfall to Iran's economy. (However, the US trade embargo on Iran, enacted after Iran's 1979 seizure of the US Embassy and hostage crisis, would remain in place, a senior US official said.) A new UN Security Council resolution outlining the deal and what steps all sides had agreed on would also be passed, Western diplomats said.