US Will Be 'More Circumspect' About Vienna Progress

US State Department says this is the final decisive stage in nuclear talks with Iran to determine whether a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA remains a possibility.

During his press briefing on Monday, department spokesperson Ned Price said, “we are going to be a bit more circumspect in terms of progress that we may be seeing on the ground in Vienna precisely because we are in the final stages of what is by any measure a complex negotiation with key stakeholders”.

Asked about the positive comments on the progress made in Vienna by European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and by the Russia’s envoy, he said, “Our European partners as well as China and Russia – all of us urgently seek to achieve an understanding, but time is almost out. Time is very quickly ticking away”.

“We have been very clear that at the current rate of Iran’s nuclear advances, we have little time left, and that’s precisely because at a certain point very soon those nuclear advances will obviate the advantages that the JCPOA, as it was finalized in 2015 and implemented in 2016, initially conveyed”, he added.

Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian discussed with Borrell the latest status of the talks in Vienna, blaming the West for lack of an agreement in nuclear talks and emphasizing that Tehran will not back down from it "red lines."