Week after week, the anxious look at Vienna and the capitals involved: Will the Iran nuclear deal still be a thing? The question is not profane; because the world can use anything right now, just no conflict or even war in the Middle East.

Anything is possible when an agreement fails. Israel expressly reserves “action” in the event that the mullahs’ regime comes dangerously close to possessing nuclear weapons. This is evidenced by maneuvers by the armed forces that have never existed before: training for a multi-front war and for air strikes against an opponent who is not on the national borders. Which is clearly intended as a warning to Tehran.

This is understandable given that the Iranian leadership is proud to be able to put 1,000 advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment into service. It is now at 60 percent, they say. The threshold of 90 percent and the atomic bomb are not far away. Not that two-thirds of the centrifuges are being dismantled; that a maximum of 5060 first-generation centrifuges will be used for ten years; that uranium will not be enriched above 3.67 percent for 15 years. And that’s not all that is not fulfilled. Not to mention controls.

Negotiations have been going on for a year. If the deal is renewed, revived, the sanctions will be lifted and hundreds of billions of dollars will be freed up for Iran. Only political questions are still open, says Tehran. Like these: Iranian Revolutionary Guards to be taken off US terror list; Iran, in turn, should no longer support the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah – and finally no longer want to wipe out Israel.

It does not look good. A replacement must urgently be found for Russia, one of the states that has hitherto been important for the achievement; In view of the war of annihilation in Ukraine, nobody will want to transfer uranium material from Iran to Russia anymore. It is also becoming increasingly difficult that Israel, the state that Iran has expressly threatened with annihilation, is not involved in the negotiations.

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, no longer rules out a failure of the negotiations. But maybe she’s building up more pressure: there’s a break in negotiations in Vienna. Indirect and informal talks continue. Now one of the architects of the (old) nuclear agreement, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will regret not being foreign minister anymore. Will his successor Annalena Baerbock save the matter? With her commitment, she would not only be doing him a favor, but the world.