Cautious optimism.

The United States reported on Thursday "substantial progress" during the negotiations in Vienna to save the Iranian nuclear agreement, judging a possible agreement "in the coming days" if Iran "shows seriousness".

"Substantial progress has been made over the past week", but "there is no overall agreement until there is agreement on the smallest detail", said a doorman. word of American diplomacy questioned 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”, warned the spokesperson for American diplomacy.

Race against time

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.

The United States left it in 2018 under the presidency of 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.

Current US President Joe Biden has said he is ready to return to the agreement, and therefore to lift part of the US sanctions again, provided that the Islamic Republic resumes its commitments.

A few days left

The Vienna negotiations aim to allow this mutual return in the text.

They are taking place between signatories who are still members of the agreement (China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Iran), with the indirect participation of the United States, which is not negotiating face-to-face with Tehran.

France had warned on Wednesday that Iran had only a few "days" left to join the agreement or trigger a "serious crisis" of proliferation.

Iranian negotiator Ali Baghéri told him that the emissaries were "closer than ever to an agreement".

“However, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he nuanced, like the Americans.

He also called on the other parties to take "serious decisions", Washington and Tehran regularly referring responsibility for each blockage.

Earlier, the Iranian authorities had recalled wanting the “guarantee” that the agreement would be well “implemented”, while the threat that an American political alternation hovers again comes to call it into question.

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