Will the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal soon be saved?

According to Washington, it is possible, and even in the next few days.

"Substantial progress has been made in the last week", but "there is no overall agreement until there is agreement on the smallest detail", said Thursday, February 17 a spokesperson for American diplomacy interviewed by AFP, without wanting to comment on the still problematic subjects.

"If Iran is serious, we can and we must reach an agreement" in "the next few days", he added.

Any delay "far beyond" this deadline "would seriously threaten the possibility of returning to the agreement", he warned.

The talks in Vienna aim to save the 2015 agreement which allowed the lifting of international economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for strict limits on its nuclear program supposed to prevent it from acquiring the atomic bomb.

"Absurd"

The United States left it in 2018 under President Donald Trump, who considered it insufficient, and reinstated its sanctions.

In response, Tehran has largely freed itself from restrictions on its nuclear activities.

Today, many experts estimate that Iran is only a handful of weeks away from having enough fissile material to manufacture a nuclear weapon - even if it still takes several complex steps to arrive at the bomb itself.

On Thursday, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called "absurd" accusations that his country was preparing to produce an atomic bomb, reaffirming that Iran's nuclear program was peaceful.

With AFP

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