Draft to restore nuclear deal being studied, Iran says

TEHERAN－Iran is studying a rough draft of a deal to revive a 2015 nuclear agreement with major powers hammered out during talks in Vienna, its foreign minister said on Saturday.

All sides have said the talks on bringing the US back into the agreement after former US president Donald Trump's 2018 walkout have reached a critical stage, Agence France-Presse reported.

Iran is "seriously reviewing (the) draft of the agreement", wrote Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in a tweet, adding that he had spoken with the European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell on the phone.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani was expected to return to Vienna from Teheran on Sunday evening, Reuters quoted Iran's official IRNA news agency as saying.

After consultations with officials in Teheran, the Iranian diplomat is meant to resume his participation in the eighth round of nuclear talks on Monday.

The EU has been acting as an intermediary between Iranian negotiators and a US delegation in the absence of US participation in face-to-face talks between Teheran and the remaining parties to the 2015 agreement.

We are "all trying to reach a good deal", Amir Abdollahian said. "Our red lines are made clear to Western parties. Ready to immediately conclude a good deal, should they show real will."

The 2015 agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, provided Iran with relief from sanctions in return for strict limits to its nuclear activities.

Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran, which prompted the latter to drop some of its nuclear commitments one year later and advance its halted nuclear programs.

Amir Abdollahian earlier said that the talks had reached "a critical and important stage".

He said he hoped the remaining "sensitive and important issues "would be resolved in the coming days "with realism from the Western side".

On Friday, a senior US State Department official said negotiators had made significant progress in the past week or so on reviving the deal, but very tough issues remained.

The US official said he hoped Iran's lead negotiator would return to Vienna in the coming days "with a positive view" but that even if he did, there were still difficult issues on the table, Reuters reported.

"There's been significant progress over the last week or two," the US official told reporters on condition of anonymity. "But at the same time, it's important to note that very serious issues remain."

Agencies via Xinhua