Iran-US nuclear talks: progress made and interim deal possible, Iranian officials say
- US President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is ready to remove ‘all sanctions that are inconsistent’ with the accord
- The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said he saw a willingness to save the 2015 deal, citing progress at the Vienna talks
Iran and world powers have made some progress on how to revive the 2015 nuclear accord later abandoned by the United States, and an interim deal could be a way to gain time for a lasting settlement, Iranian officials said on Monday.
Tehran and the powers have been meeting in Vienna since early April to work on steps that must be taken, touching on US sanctions and Iran’s breaches of the deal, to bring back Tehran and Washington into full compliance with the accord.
“We are on the right track and some progress has been made, but this does not mean that the talks in Vienna have reached the final stage,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a weekly news conference in Tehran.
“Practical solutions are still far away, but we have moved from general words to agreeing on specific steps towards the goal,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog agency (IAEA), wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Iran’s clerical establishment has said it will not return to strict observance of the 2015 agreement unless all sanctions reimposed or added by former President Donald Trump after he ditched the accord in 2018 are rescinded first.