The European Union put forth a "final" text to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear accord as four days of indirect negotiations between world powers and Iranian officials wrapped up in Vienna.
Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran and Russia, as well as the United States indirectly, resumed talks on Thursday in Vienna, months after they had stalled.
The European Union has submitted a "final text," a European official said on Monday. "We worked for four days and today the text is on the table," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The official said no further changes could be made to the text, which has been under negotiation for 15 months, and he said he expected a final decision from the parties within a "very, very few weeks."
"Today we are tabling a text that is the final text," the senior EU official said at a briefing in Vienna. "This text is not going to be further negotiated or changed."
"Now the ball is in the court of the capitals and we will see what happens," the official added. "No one is staying in Vienna."
Iran said it was examining the 25-page document.
A U.S. State Department official said that Washington was ready to quickly reach an agreement to revive the deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the basis of the EU proposals.
Iranian officials, however, suggested that they did not regard the EU proposals as final, saying they would convey their "additional views and considerations" to the European Union, which coordinates the talks, after consultations in Tehran.
"As soon as we received these ideas, we conveyed our initial response and considerations," Iran's state-run IRNA news agency quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as saying.
"But naturally, these items require a comprehensive review, and we will convey our additional views and considerations."
Iran's chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, would shortly fly back to Tehran for consultations, IRNA said. At the top of Iran's theocracy is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who would have the final say on any deal.
On Sunday, Iran demanded the U.N. nuclear watchdog "completely" resolve questions over nuclear material at undeclared sites.
Iranian sources have suggested a key sticking point has been a probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on traces of nuclear material found at undeclared Iranian sites.
"That has nothing to do with" the JCPOA agreement of 2015, the European official said. "I hope Iran and the IAEA will reach an agreement because that will facilitate a lot of things."
The U.N. agency's board of governors adopted a resolution in June, censuring Iran for failing to adequately explain the previous discovery of traces of enriched uranium at three previously undeclared sites.
"We believe that the agency should completely resolve the remaining safeguard issues from a technical route by distancing itself from irrelevant and unconstructive political issues,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday.
Kelsey Davenport, an expert at the Arms Control Association, warned against abandoning the IAEA probe in a bid to revive the JCPOA, which she called "the most effective way to verifiably block Iran's pathways to nuclear weapons."
If the United States and the other signatories to the 2015 deal do not support the U.N. body, it will "undermine the agency's mandate" and broader non-proliferation goals, she wrote on Twitter.
The EU-coordinated negotiations to revive the JCPOA began in April 2021 before coming to a standstill in March.
The 2015 accord gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its atomic program to guarantee Tehran could not develop a nuclear weapon – something it has always denied wanting to do.
But the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the deal under former President Donald Trump in 2018 and the reimposition of biting economic sanctions prompted Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.
