The positions look locked ahead of next week's meeting in Vienna on the Global Nuclear Energy Agreement from 2015. The agreement has led to a shaky existence since 2018 when the then US President Donald Trump backed out of it and reintroduced sanctions against Tehran.
However, the new US President Joe Biden has promised that the country will rejoin the agreement, which aims to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons through, among other things, transparency in the country's nuclear energy program.
The Iranian government is now demanding that all US sanctions be lifted in order for Iran to re-accept the agreement, reports the state-controlled and English-language Iranian news media Press TV, referring to Said Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry.
But Jalina Porter, a spokeswoman for the US State Department, said as recently as Friday that the focus of the talks in Vienna is what measures Iran will need to take to act in accordance with the nuclear deal.
The planned meeting in Vienna will not include any direct bilateral talks between representatives of the United States and Iran, but there will be indirect talks with so-called shuttle diplomacy.
The aim is to reach a settlement within two months, according to EU sources, before Iran goes to the general elections in June.