Iran continues to insist it will neither accept nor abide by "any deadline" set by the West to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
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Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said Monday that the demand by world powers to set such a deadline was "politically motivated" and based on what he called the claims by the International Atomic Energy Agency about Tehran's "false" claims as to the Islamic Republic's current nuclear ability.
As the Vienna talks continue to hit snags, the Iranian official insisted that France's demand that IAEA inspectors continue to investigate the military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program could bring about the failure of the negotiations and demanded they be dropped, Iranian state TV reported.
Britain's lead negotiator at the talks, Stephanie Al-Qaq, defended the IAEA, and said Britain, France, and Germany opposed interfering in its work.
"We will always reject any attempt to compromise IAEA independence," she wrote on Twitter.
"We have answered the agency's [IAEA] questions or politically motivated claims ... that we think were baseless. These dossiers should be closed," Khatibzadeh said, adding, "Iran accepts no deadlines," for the nuclear talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna.
In recent days, Iran has argued that 98% of the agreement has already been drafted, including the outline through which US sanctions will be lifted and the mechanism through which Iran will return to implementing the key articles in the original deal regarding uranium enrichment.
However, the issue of IAEA oversight could again derail the talks,
The stakes are high, because the failure of 10 months of talks could carry the risk of a fresh regional war, more harsh sanctions on Iran by the West, and continued upward pressure on world oil prices already strained by the Ukraine conflict.
All parties involved in the talks say progress has been made toward the restoration of the pact to curb Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, which the United States abandoned in 2018. But both Tehran and Washington have said there are still some significant differences to overcome.
On Tuesday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the war in Ukraine should be stopped and accused the "mafia-like regime" of the United States of creating the conflict.
Russia, whose troops invaded Ukraine last week, is a strategic partner for Iran, which has been under Western sanctions for years. While Tehran and Washington have been foes for decades, Iran and Russia have deepened trade ties and have been allies in the Syrian conflict.
"The US regime creates crises, lives off of crises and feeds on various crises in the world. Ukraine is another victim of this policy," Khamenei said in a televised speech.
"In my view, Ukraine is a victim of the crises concocted by the United States," he said. "There are two lessons to be learned here. States which depend on the support of the US and Western powers need to know they cannot trust such countries."
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