'Significant progress' in Vienna nuclear talks, Iran says

DUBAI－Talks in Vienna on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers have made "significant progress", said Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh on Monday.

While Khatibzadeh said significant progress was made, he also noted that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" in the Vienna talks. "The remaining issues are the hardest," he told a weekly news briefing.

Separately, Iran's top security official Ali Shamkhani said talks with European negotiators are ongoing and would continue, while negotiations with the United States are not on the agenda because they would not be a source of "any breakthroughs".

Indirect talks between Teheran and Washington have been held in Vienna since April.

Reuters reported last week that a US-Iranian deal is taking shape in Vienna after months of indirect talks to revive the nuclear pact, which Washington abandoned in 2018 under former president Donald Trump.

The draft text of the agreement also alluded to other issues, including unfreezing billions of dollars in Iranian funds in South Korean banks and the release of Western prisoners held in Iran.

Iran is ready to swap prisoners with the US, said Iran's foreign minister on Saturday, adding that talks to revive the nuclear deal could succeed "at the earliest possible time" if the US made the necessary political decisions.

Talks on reviving the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, have been held in the Austrian capital Vienna since late November involving Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia directly, and the US indirectly.

In another development, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Qatar on Monday for a major gas summit.

Raisi and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani signed a number of bilateral agreements in Doha, Iranian state television and Qatar's Al Jazeera network showed.

During a news conference with Qatar's Emir in Doha, Raisi said the United States should prove its will to lift sanctions, Reuters reported. "Guarantees are essential to reach an agreement in the nuclear talks," Raisi said.

Raisi is leading a delegation to the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Doha, designed to develop economic, energy and political cooperation between Iran and Qatar.

Ministers from the 11-member group were to meet on Monday to approve a summit statement that industry analysts predicted would touch on the lack of spare supplies that could help Europe, where consumers are already paying record prices for gas.

Raisi is the first Iranian president to visit Doha in 11 years.

Agencies via Xinhua