Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on salvaging the 2015 Iran nuclear deal adjourned and will resume in the middle of next week, the talks' coordinator and China's top envoy to the negotiations told reporters, Reuters reports.
According to China's envoy Wang Qun, the talks would resume midweek.
The talks' coordinator, European Union official Enrique Mora, when asked if talks would resume on Wednesday, said: "Around that".
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the latest round of Iran nuclear talks ended because Iran right now does not seem to be serious about doing what is necessary to return to compliance with a 2015 deal.
Blinken, speaking at the Reuters Next conference, said that the United States would not let Iran drag out the process while continuing to advance its program and that Washington will pursue other options if diplomacy fails.
"What we've seen in the last couple of days is that Iran right now does not seem to be serious about doing what's necessary to return to compliance, which is why we ended this round of talks in Vienna," Blinken said.
"We're going to be consulting very closely and carefully with all of our partners in the process itself ... and we will see if Iran has any interest in engaging seriously," he said.
Iran’s delegation at the Vienna talks offered a radical revision of the draft document on the nuclear program, which caused a pained reaction of western states, Russia’s Permanent Envoy to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov told reporters on Friday.
"The fact that the Iranian side offered a substantial revision, a radical revision of the draft nuclear document, which was agreed during the previous six rounds, had a strong impression on our western partners," he said. "It seemed to them (western delegations - TASS) that this approach is too radical, which caused such a pained reaction," the diplomat added.
European participants of the consultations in Vienna were not happy with some proposals of the Iranian side, according to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri who was quoted as saying by ISNA agency on Friday. He said on Thursday that Tehran provided the parties with a draft agreement on resumption of the nuclear deal consisting of two documents devoted to the removal of the US sanctions and the nuclear program-related issues.
Indirect U.S.-Iranian talks on saving the nuclear deal broke off until next week as European officials voiced dismay on Friday at the demands of Iran's new, hardline administration.
The 2015 agreement put restrictions on Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for the easing of some international sanctions. In 2018 then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal, calling it too soft on Tehran, and reimposed painful U.S. economic sanctions on Tehran.
Iran then began breaching many of the deal's limits on enrichment and other restrictions.
"If the path to a return to compliance with the agreement turns out to be a dead-end, we will pursue other options," Blinken said, but declined to spell out what those would be.
