During the American Civil War in 1864, a prisoner of war camp was set up in southwest Georgia near the town of Andersonville. Guard stations topped the log walls and a shallow ditch was dug several feet from the camp walls. Anyone who dared to cross or stumble near that ditch was shot dead. Thus, during a brutal summer in the Confederacy, the concept of a "dead line" was born.

Tuesday was a day of missed deadlines. For the third time, Iran and the six world powers granted themselves more time to try and finalize a nuclear deal. Greece missed its deadline to make a $1.9 billion debt repayment to the International Monetary Fund, and at midnight, the second bailout program for Greece expired without a deal, making it all the more difficult for the European Central Bank to continue financial assistance to Athens.

No one is getting shot over these skirted deadlines, but the consequences of the face-saving tactics that are stalling both negotiations also leave little room for complacency.

Iran is the simpler of the two issues. Major sticking points remain over the pace of sanctions relief and the scope of inspections. These points are ultimately negotiable, and some kind of accord, whether interim or final, is still possible in the coming days. But more stringent demands coming from the supreme leader at the 11th hour of the negotiation, including a demand that all economic and financial sanctions be lifted immediately upon the signing of a deal, will obviously complicate matters because of the sheer impossibility of the task.

Remember that the supreme leader's demands work in parallel to the demands emanating from the U.S. Congress to shape a final deal. Though the Iranian negotiating team can claim its hands are tied unless it can show substantial sanctions relief, the U.S. negotiating team can say it cannot move an inch on sanctions unless it gets a robust inspections regime in place to satisfy U.S. lawmakers in the middle of campaign season. We are still in the thick of that negotiation, and though a deal in which both sides can find a face-saving compromise may be inevitable, it is also little wonder that they are running into delays.

Greece's missed deadlines carry far more weight. We have noticed a major disconnect developing between Greece and its creditors in the lead up to theJuly 5referendum. The referendum assumes that Greek voters understand the intricacies of the creditors' previous proposals and can use that understanding to determine whether their offer is tolerable. If the Greeks vote yes, the path is fairly straightforward: The left-wing radical government will likely resign and choose to return to the opposition, preferring to leave the burden of negotiating painful austerity measures to another government. Greece will hold early elections, and the ECB will provide some form of financial assistance in the interim until a new national unity government or caretaker government can resume the negotiations over a third bailout.

It is the potential no vote where things get discombobulated. Whereas Greece's creditors, along with the mainstream financial press, see a no vote in the referendum as a no vote for Europe and thus a sure path to Grexit, the Greek government and voters see things quite differently. The ruling Syriza government's campaign for a no vote is a negotiating tactic to try and pressure the creditors into a more favorable deal. It is not an attempt to get the public mandate to leave the European club. In fact, the ruling Syriza government is insisting that it will take the issue to court if the European Central Bank tries to use a default to throw Greece out of the eurozone. Greek voters, meanwhile, see a no vote in the referendum as a vote against austerity, not a vote against Europe. The no vote rallies in Athens have included a number of middle class moderates who would likely be much more reluctant to vote no if they truly believed that doing so would guarantee a Grexit. The milder interpretation the vote with Greece raises the possibility that theSunday referendum could tilt toward the no camp.

But a no vote does not automatically lead to Syriza paving the path for a Grexit, either. The ECB's freezing of emergency liquidity assistance has left Greece's banking sector in dire straits. There is a serious question as to whether Greek banks can even sustain limited cash withdrawals over the next several days without taking the more drastic measure of printing a parallel currency. If a no vote accelerates the crisis and banks run dry, then the Syriza government is unlikely to last long. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is not trying to be the captain that sinks with his ship. The series of last-minute proposals he is throwing out now are, at least in part, designed to show that he did whatever he could to strike a deal with the creditors but they, not he, drove Greece into crisis. Though it would be a rockier path, the creditors could still find themselves in the position of resuming a negotiation with a more moderate government while Syriza, or a new manifestation of Syriza, returns to the opposition to await the next crisis and reassert itself on the political scene.

Either way, it is a messy trajectory. From Germany's perspective, forcing a Grexit at this stage of the crisis makes little geopolitical sense. Berlin is working to preserve the eurozone and prevent Greece from becoming a bargaining chip for potential adversaries. However, striking a deal with a government that has used a public referendum as a weapon sets a dangerous precedent, especially with Euroskeptic parties on the rise across Europe and elections approaching in both Spain and Portugal. The best Germany can hope for is a crisis that produces a more moderate negotiating partner. While Germany holds out for that prospect, the European institutions could provide limited financial assistance to keep Greek banks solvent. Still, there is no guarantee that a new government will be more inclined toward a deal if enough Greek voters see Syriza as the martyrs and the creditors as the punishers.

Greece has missed its deadlines, but it is still dangerously close to the eurozone dead line, with Germany anxiously keeping watch from the guard tower.

(Stratfor, "Geopolitical Diary", July 1, 2015)