The last few rounds of Iran nuclear deal talks in Vienna have "helped to crystallize the choices that need to be made" by Tehran and Washington to achieve a mutual return to compliance, the United States told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
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"The United States is committed to ensuring Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon, and we believe diplomacy, in coordination with our allies and regional partners, is the best path to achieve that goal," said Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Jeffrey DeLaurentis.
Last Thursday, a senior US official said Washington may need to rethink its approach to Iran if the serious differences between the two countries on resuming compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal cannot be resolved "in the foreseeable future."
"We still have serious differences ... over the host of issues, whether it's the nuclear steps that Iran needs to take to come back into compliance, the sanctions relief that the US would be offering, or the sequence of steps that both sides would be taking," the official told reporters on a conference call.
"This process is not going to be open forever," the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We do have differences and if we can't bridge them in the foreseeable future, I think we are going to have to regroup and figure out how we ... move ahead."
The sixth round of indirect talks adjourned on Sunday, two days after hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian judiciary chief who is subject to US sanctions, was elected president of the Islamic Republic. Raisi is due to take office in August.
The official said the US delegation expected to return to Vienna for a seventh round of talks in the not-too-distant future but he did not know when suggesting the key factor would be internal Iranian consultations following Raisi's election.
The senior US official declined to detail the sticking points in the talks, which are indirect because Iran refuses to sit down with the US side. European diplomats are the main intermediaries.
An official involved in the talks said Iran's enrichment with large numbers of advanced centrifuges is an unresolved issue, as is Iran's demand that it "verify" US compliance before curbing its nuclear program.
This official said verification meant the easing of US sanctions, Iran's export of some oil, and its payment through an international bank before Tehran would take steps to make its program less capable of being used to make nuclear weapons.
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