France's foreign minister said on Thursday that he feared Iran was playing for time and that talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are expected to resume on Thursday.
The elements. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke to a French parliament committee about the seventh round of nuclear talks between Iran and major powers that began on November 29 and stopped at: www.reuters. Com markets commodities iran-nuclear talks-break europe-dismayed by Tehran demands -- 2021 -- 12 -- 03 on Friday.
We feel that the Iranians want to make it last and the longer the talks last, the more they go back on their commitments. Le Drian said that they needed to get closer to capacity to get a nuclear weapon.
Under the 2015 deal struck by Tehran and six major powers, Iran limited its nuclear program in return for U.S. and U.N. sanctions.
President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018 and imposed harsh U.S. sanctions, and Iran began violating the nuclear restrictions a year later.
A senior U.S. State Department official said Washington did not yet have a confirmed date, despite Le Drian and Iranian media reports saying that talks were expected to resume Thursday.
The indirect U.S. Iranian talks in Vienna, in which other diplomats shuttle between them because Tehran refuses direct talks with Washington, aim to get both sides to resume compliance with the deal.
The talks last week broke off with European and U.S. officials expressing dismay at the sweeping demands of Iran's new, hardline government under anti-Western President Ebrahim Raisi whose June election caused a five-month pause in the talks.
A senior U.S. official said on Saturday: "https://www.reuters.com." Iran has left any compromises it had made in the previous six rounds of talks, pocketed those made by others and demanded more last week, according to com world iran-abandoned- any-compromises-us -- latest-nuclear talks-us -- 2021 -- 12 -- 04
Each side seems to be trying to blame the other for the lack of progress.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the presidents of the United States and Russia - two of the six major powers in the deal - along with Britain, China, France and Germany - had a productive discussion about Iran on Tuesday.
The more Iran demonstrates a lack of seriousness at the negotiating table, the more unity there is among the P 5 1 and the more they are exposed as the isolated party in this negotiation, he told reporters.
According to Bill Burns, Central Intelligence Agency Director, Bill Burns said the agency does not believe Iran's supreme leader has decided to take steps to weaponize a nuclear device, but it has made advances in its ability to enrich uranium, one pathway to the fissile material for a bomb.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, saying it only wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Burns told the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit that they didn't see any evidence as an agency right now that Iran's supreme leader has made a decision to weaponize.
Burns described Iran's challenge as a three-legged race to obtain fissile material, to weaponize by placing such material into a device designed to cause a nuclear explosion, and to mate it to a delivery system such as a ballistic missile.
Burns said that the Iranians still have a lot of work to do there, as far as we judge it.