President Barack Obama will know by Friday whether he got the deal on Iranian nuclear material on which he has staked his engagement strategy. A third day of talks in Vienna ended inconclusively Wednesday, with the Iranian delegation requiring consultations with their government back in Tehran before signing off on a detailed plan to ship three-quarters of its current stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into harmless reactor fuel. The parties to the deal have been given until Friday to report back, although reports from Vienna suggested that Tehran was pushing back against some of the terms being set for the deal by the U.S. and its partners - specifically over the timetable and scale of Iran's uranium delivery to Russia.
The points of contention not only highlight the differing objectives of the two sides in making a deal. They also serve as a reminder that as significant a confidence-building mechanism as the Vienna deal may be, it doesn't actually begin to address the deadlock between Iran and the West over whether the Islamic Republic will continue to enrich uranium. (See pictures of the world's worst nuclear disasters.)
The deal under discussion in Vienna was hatched when Iran approached the IAEA earlier this year for help in acquiring fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran, which is not suspected of being part of any covert weapons program. U.S. officials took the opportunity to address "ticking clock" concerns that Iran had already amassed enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) that - if it expelled inspectors and reprocessed the material to weapons grade - could be fashioned into a single atomic bomb. So Washington proposed that Iran use its own stockpile of LEU as the basis for the reactor fuel, which would require shipping it to Russia and France for further enrichment and conversion into fuel rods that would be extremely difficult for Iran to weaponize. The deal obviously appealed to the West as a way to limit Iran's ability to potentially create a bomb; but the Iranians aren't viewing it as a concession. They see the deal as a tacit recognition that uranium-enrichment in Iran is an intractable reality, despite Western hopes of coaxing and cajoling Iran into abandoning it altogether in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives. (After all, the uranium that Russia and France would reprocess for Iran under the proposed deal was enriched in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.)
There's nothing unusual about a diplomatic solution containing elements that both sides can claim as a victory, but the competing agendas of Iran and its Western interlocutors may explain the disagreements currently clouding the talks. The West, eager to buy time for negotiations without Iran moving steadily closer to the capacity to make a weapon, wants the Iranian uranium that will be turned into reactor fuel under the deal to be delivered in a single shipment, and by the end of this year. But as much as Iran sees the agreement as an opportunity to build Western confidence in its intentions, and also acquire much-needed reactor fuel, it remains suspicious of foreign powers. Tehran sought this week to exclude France from participating in the deal on the grounds that it could not be trusted by Iran - and, indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken the hardest line among Western leaders on forcing a halt to Iran's uranium enrichment. But even Russia has been frequently accused by Tehran of dragging its feet over the construction of Iran's nuclear reactor at Bushehr. (See a graphic of the nuclear armed world.)
Iran plainly doesn't share the sense of urgency of the U.S. and its allies, and rejects the idea that its uranium stockpile represents a security threat. Its relatively low-level delegation in Vienna was not authorized to conclude an agreement. And reports from the talks suggest that the country was hoping to stagger its shipments into smaller parcels, and over a longer time frame. Western diplomats, however, are mindful of the fact that Iran will keep on enriching uranium - and fear that if its keeps its centrifuges running while shipping out smaller portions, it can maintain close to enough for a single bomb in its own stockpile.
Not surprisingly Friday's verdict remains uncertain. IAEA chief Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei says his "fingers are crossed" that the deal will be green-lighted, while U.S. officials warn that the offer is a key test of Iran's intentions. An Iranian rejection would pour cold water on the cautious optimism from the White House over the prospects for engagement. But even if Tehran agrees to the deal, it doesn't address the Western objective of ending uranium enrichment in Iran. The negotiations in Vienna, and on Oct. 1 in Geneva, have essentially sidestepped the issue of Iran's compliance with Security Council resolutions requiring that it suspend enrichment in order to strengthen safeguards against its nuclear material being used for military purposes.
Until now, the U.S. and its allies have insisted that Iran can't be allowed to possess enrichment capability even for peaceful purposes, because that gives it a "breakout" capacity to relatively quickly build nuclear weapons should it choose that option. Iran continues to insist that it has no intention of abandoning enrichment. But if Tehran combines its refusal to end enrichment with a more accommodating position on measures to safeguard against weaponization, it could put the West in a diplomatic bind - forced to choose between making progress on the basis of diminished goals, or facing an uphill battle to muster sufficient pressure to force Iran into retreat.
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View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:At Vienna Nuclear-Fuel Talks, Iran Snubs France, Sarkozy How Obama's Secret Iran Talks Set the Stage for a Nuclear Deal Iran's Geneva Offer on Nukes: Progress for All The Pentagon's Message on Iran: Don't Panic Why Iran Won't Budge on Nukes

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With auto construction and racing dominated by France, the French automobile club ACF staged a number of major international races, usually from or to Paris, connecting with another major city in Europe or France.

British Stock car racing is a form of Short Oval Racing. This takes place on shale or tarmac tracks in either clockwise or anti-clockwise direction depending on the class, some of which allow contact. Races are organized by local promoters and all drivers are registered with BRISCA and have their own race number. What classes exist depends on the promoter, so events in Scotland at Cowdenbeath can be very different from an event at Wimbledon Stadium in London.

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An open park bench in al-Mahdi Park, Tehran. the bench seat is a traditional seat installed in automobiles, featuring a continuous pad running the full width of the cabin. a punishment bench is used to have a punishee lie (and often be tied) down on for the administration of a corporal punishment, after which it may be specifically named, e.g. caning bench.

Various types of benches are specifically designed for and/or named after specific uses, such as a Bench (weight training) is used for fitness exercises, such as the bench press which is named after its use of a bench a Communion bench is not used as a seat Piano benches offer usually one person seating and are height adjustable. a spanking bench, such as a caning bench, is specifically designed for a spankee to lie upon, possibly strapped down, while submitting to paining of the posterior Swing seats are independently movable, suspended benches, used for play or as a relaxing porch swing. a courting bench (or kissing bench, or tête-à-tête): a two-seater with the seats pointing in opposite directions, thus almost facing each other. A friendship bench in a school playground is where a child can go when they want someone to talk to. The bench in a courtroom, behind which the judge is seated.

The dog (Canis lupus familiaris, pronounced /ˈkeɪ.nis ˈluːpəs fʌˈmɪliɛəris/) is a domesticated subspecies of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The domestic dog has been one of the most widely kept working and companion animals in human history. The domestication of the gray wolf took place in a handful of events roughly 15,000 years ago in central Asia. The dog quickly became ubiquitous across culture in all parts of the world, and was extremely valuable to early human settlements. For instance, it is believed that the successful emigration across the Bering Strait might not have been possible without sled dogs. As a result of the domestication process, the dog developed a sophisticated intelligence that includes unparalleled social cognition and a simple theory of mind[citation needed] that is important to their interaction with humans. These social skills have helped the dog to perform in myriad roles, such as hunting, herding, protection, and, more recently, assisting handicapped individuals. Currently, there are estimated to be 400 million dogs in the world.

Over the 15,000 year span that the dog had been domesticated, it diverged into only a handful of landraces, groups of similar animals whose morphology and behavior have been shaped by environmental factors and functional roles. As the modern understanding of genetics developed, humans began to intentionally breed dogs for a wide range of specific traits. Through this process, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal. For example, height measured to the withers ranges from a few inches in the Chihuahua to a few feet in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called "blue'") to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark ("red" or "chocolate") in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be short or long, coarse-haired to wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth. It is common for most breeds to shed this coat, but non-shedding breeds are also popular.

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