Iran and world powers have made some progress on how to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, 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.
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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 Tehran and Washington back 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," Iranian 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 International Atomic Energy Agency wrote on Twitter on Monday.
US President Joe Biden's administration, which took office in January pledging to rejoin the deal, has said it is ready to remove "all sanctions that are inconsistent" with the accord, but has not spelled out which measures it means.
Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told Fox News Sunday that the Vienna talks had been "constructive," but he wouldn't give specific details on the proposals.
"What I will say is that the United States is not going to lift sanctions unless we have clarity and confidence that Iran will fully return to compliance with its obligations under the deal," he said.
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unless all sanctions reimposed or added by former President Donald Trump after he withdrew from the accord in 2018 are rescinded first.
Diplomats say sequenced steps by each side may offer a solution, while Iranian officials said the high-stakes talks in Vienna might yield an interim deal to give space to diplomacy on a lasting settlement.
"The May deadline is approaching ... What is being discussed in Vienna for the near term is the main outlines of an interim deal to give all sides more time to resolve complicated technical issues," said an Iranian official.
He referred to a law passed by Iran's hardline-dominated parliament that obliges the government to harden its nuclear stance if sanctions are not lifted.
The law mandated an end to short-notice UN nuclear inspections from Feb. 21, but Tehran and the IAEA agreed to keep up "necessary" monitoring for up to three months.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi told Iranian state media that "there is no discussion on an interim agreement or similar topics in the Vienna talks."
However, another Iranian official said that if a political agreement was reached on technical steps to remove all sanctions, Tehran might suspend enrichment to 20% purity in return for a release of blocked Iranian funds in other countries.
Iran says $20 billion of its oil revenue has been frozen in countries like South Korea, Iraq and China under the US sanctions regime since 2018.
"Unblocking Iran's funds is a good start. An interim deal will give us time to work on removal of all sanctions on Iran," the second Iranian official said.
Asked for comment, a US State Department spokesman said talks were continuing in Vienna and that the US team "has been exploring concrete approaches concerning the steps both Iran and the US would need to take to return to mutual compliance."
"The discussions have been thorough and thoughtful, if indirect ... There have been no breakthroughs, but we did not expect this process to be easy or quick," he added, saying the delegations were expected to return home for consultations at some point but he did not know when.
Beyond the sanctions reimposed in 2018, Trump added new ones, including classifying Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group and designating Iran's Central Bank over allegations of terrorist financing.
The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said he saw a willingness to save the 2015 deal, citing progress at the Vienna talks.
"I think that both parties are really interested in reaching an agreement, and they have been moving from general to more focused issues, which are clearly, on one side sanction-lifting, and on the other side, nuclear implementation issues," he said.
From the perception of the E3, the three western European countries involved in the talks, there is "progress and the will to move forward" in Vienna, German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said.
"Overall, we may be, and hopefully are on a path of rapprochement," she told reporters in Berlin. "But there are still many, many open questions."
Iran has violated the deal's nuclear limits since Washington withdrew, recently raising uranium enrichment to 20% fissile purity, a significant step towards bomb-grade material.
The 2015 pact capped the level of enrichment purity at 3.67% – suitable for generating civilian nuclear energy.
Complicating Biden's aim of rejoining the deal, Tehran last week launched enrichment to 60% purity at its main Natanz plant after a damaging blast there that it blamed on sabotage by Israel, which opposes a return to the original nuclear deal with Iran.
Around 90% fissile purity is needed for a nuclear explosive.
The IAEA and Iran on Monday started talks aimed at obtaining explanations from Tehran on the origin of uranium traces found at undeclared locations in Iran, an issue which could affect efforts to revive Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal.
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IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi has been pushing Iran for answers on the three sites where inspections had revealed traces of uranium of human-made origin, suggesting they were connected to Iran's nuclear program.
Failure to make progress on explaining the uranium traces in the IAEA's talks with Tehran could mean France, Britain and Germany would push for a resolution with US backing by the next IAEA board meeting in June.
"The IAEA and Iran began today to engage in a focused process aimed at clarifying outstanding safeguards issues," the IAEA said in a statement, adding that the meeting was at the level of experts.
"Today's meeting took place in Vienna, as participating Iranian experts are also involved in separate meetings on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action at another location in the Austrian capital," the IAEA said, using the deal's full name.
