LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Top diplomats from Iran and the six world powers (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, or P5+1) said they would be working late into the night on the eve of a self-imposed deadline to reach a political accord for a final Iran nuclear deal.

“There still remain some difficult issues,” Secretary of State John Kerry said March 30. “We are working very hard to work through those.”

“We are working late into the night and obviously into tomorrow,” Kerry said. “We are working with a view to get something done. There is a little more light there today, but there are still some tricky issues. Everyone knows the meaning of tomorrow.”

“Important issues have remained, we will be working all night,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told journalists here late March 30.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov returned to Moscow the evening of March 30 after all day meetings with counterparts on the Iran issue, but his spokeswoman said he would return March 31 to Lausanne if progress had been made toward completing the preliminary accord.

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This article was written by Laura Rozen  for Al-monitor on March 31, 2015. Laura Rozen reports on foreign policy from Washington, DC, for Al-Monitor's Back Channel. She has written for Yahoo! News, Politico and Foreign Policy. On Twitter: @LRozen