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Vienna Just hours after nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers missed a Monday deadline, yielding instead a seven-month extension of negotiations, one sign indicated a combative return to business as usual.

In a speech to visiting Muslim clerics, Irans supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, devoted just two lines to the talks: In the nuclear issue, America and colonial European countries got together and did their best to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees, but they could not do so and they will not be able to do so.

A triumphalist note, perhaps, about the 2-1/2 years of talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 group (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany), and one that may sound jarring to those in the West who worry that extending the talks makes them vulnerable to hard-liners on both sides who oppose a compromise deal.

But, analysts say, it is in fact part of an effort to broaden Iranian official and public support for continuing the talks and prepare Iranians for the result, whatever it may be.

Throughout the process, Mr. Khamenei has authorized every negotiating step, and in recent months as the talks closed in on the Nov. 24 deadline increasingly engaged in laying down Iransred line positionsand gave personal support to Irans diplomats.

In the past week there have been further signs of Khamenei lining up support for a deal: an orchestrated nationwide push from Friday prayer leaders and even senior military officers voices that have often been critical of negotiations to support the talks and a possible compromise with foreign powers led by a long-standing arch-enemy, the United States.

You can look at it both ways: They are preparing the ground either for a deal, or a situation where a deal doesnt happen, because there are so many differences, says Farideh Farhi, an Iran specialist at the University of Hawaii.

It makes perfect sense for the Iranian political establishment to enter this process in a unified way so win or lose, failure or success, everyone can take credit. They have decided they are all in this together, says Ms. Farhi.

Its not a delaying tactic; their logic is close to that of the P5+1, adds Farhi. As the deadline approached, and gaps remained, the Iranians could have walked away, but instead, like the P5+1 diplomats, looked each other in the eye and decided, no.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France which has taken the toughest line against Iran of the P5+1 said in the final days talks had accelerated and that he detected from Iran a will to find an agreement I hadnt felt in the past.

Original post:
Iran nuclear talks: How Khamenei got Iranians to read from same page (+video)