Iranian reformists and even some conservative newspapers have welcomed the extension of the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program until July 2015.
Hard-line dailies, however, have been sharply critical of the extension that was announced in Vienna on November 24.
The front pages of Iran's major reformist daily "Shargh" and the hard-line "Vatan-e Emruz, a critic of the nuclear negotiations with the West, highlight the divide.
"Shargh" referred to the extension of the nuclear talks for another seven months as the "Extension of Hope."
"Vatan-e Emruz," on the other hand, suggested that the nuclear talks were a failure.
"Nothing!" reads the headline on the newspaper's front page on November 24. The daily wrote that, a year after the Geneva deal, "talks for removing sanctions" failed to bring results.
On November 25, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reacted to the extension of the nuclear talks with one sentence:
"In the nuclear issue, the United States and colonial European countries got together and did their utmost to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees, but they failed, and will continue to fail," Ayatollah Khamenei was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
Khamenei has the final say on all issues in the Islamic republic.
--Golnaz Esfandiari
