US says nuclear deal close, some issues still ‘unsolved’

“I’ll just say that there has been significant progress and we are close to a possible deal, but a number of difficult issues still remain unsolved,” Jalina Porter, the US State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson, told reporters on Thursday.

“There’s very little remaining time to reach a deal given the pace of Iran’s nuclear advances, and as we’ve said before –and I’ll underscore here again today – that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. So we will not have a deal unless we resolved quickly the remaining issues,” she added.

Tehran, Beijing and Moscow have pushed back on the need to establish a fixed deadline for the nuclear negotiations to conclude.

Iranian officials have rejected western diplomats’ remarks about a deadline for reaching an agreement in Vienna talks, and stressed Tehran is only after a good agreement.

“If Iran shows seriousness, we can and should reach an understanding of mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA within days. Outside of that, anything would put us in the possibility of return to the deal at grave risk,” she continued.

Tehran says it won’t settle for anything less than the removal of all US sanctions in a verifiable manner. It also wants guarantees that Washington would not abandon the agreement again.

Earlier, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said talks between Iran and the P4+1 are still ongoing in the Austrian capital Vienna.

Khatibzadeh stated premature good news can never replace a good deal to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

“No one can say that an agreement has been reached, until all the outstanding important issues are resolved, redoubled efforts are needed. Everyone is now focused on the final key steps,” the spokesman wrote in a twitter post.

The Vienna negotiations began last April between Iran and the five remaining parties to the JCPOA — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — on the assumption that the US, under the Joe Biden administration, is willing to repeal the so-called maximum pressure policy pursued by former president, Donald Trump.