Nuclear talks make some progress, interim deal possible, say Iranian officials 

Iran and world powers have made some progress on how to revive the 2015 nuclear accord later abandoned by the United States, and an interim deal could be a way to gain time for a lasting settlement, Iranian officials said on Monday.

Tehran and the powers have been meeting in Vienna since early April to work on steps that must be taken, touching on US sanctions and Iran's recent breaches of the deal, to bring back Tehran and Washington into full compliance with the accord.

"We are on the right track and some progress has been made, but this does not mean that the talks in Vienna have reached the final stage," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a weekly news conference in Tehran.

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"Practical solutions are still far away, but we have moved from general words to agreeing on specific steps towards the goal,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog agency (IAEA), wrote on Twitter on Monday.

US President Joe Biden's administration, which took office in January pledging to rejoin the deal, has said it is ready to remove 'all sanctions that are inconsistent' with the accord, but not spelled out which measures it means.

Iran's clerical establishment has said it will not return to strict observance of the 2015 agreement unless all sanctions reimposed or added by former President Donald Trump after he ditched the accord in 2018 are rescinded first.

Diplomats say sequenced steps by each side may offer a solution, while Iranian officials said the high-stakes talks in Vienna might yield an interim deal to give space to diplomacy on a lasting settlement.

"The May deadline is approaching...What is being discussed in Vienna for the near term is the main outlines of an interim deal to give all sides more time to resolve complicated technical issues," said an Iranian official.

He referred to a law passed by Iran's hardline-dominated parliament that obliges the government to harden its nuclear stance if sanctions are not lifted.

The law mandated an end to short-notice UN nuclear inspections from February 21, but Tehran and the IAEA agreed to keep up ‘necessary' monitoring for up to three months.

Another Iranian official said that if a political agreement was reached on technical steps to remove all sanctions, Tehran might suspend enrichment to 20% purity in return for a release of blocked Iranian funds in other countries.

Iran says $20 billion of its oil revenue has been frozen in countries like South Korea, Iraq and China under the US sanctions regime since 2018.

(With inputs from agencies)