US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said on Sunday (March 27) that he was not confident that a nuclear deal between world powers and Iran was imminent after 11 months of talks in Vienna that have stalled.
"I can't be confident it is imminent... a few months ago we thought we were pretty close as well," Mr Malley said at the Doha Forum international conference. "The sooner we get back into the deal, which is in our interest, and presumably Iran's interest, the more faithfully we implement it."
His assessment of negotiations in Vienna to revive a 2015 nuclear accord seemed to contradict Mr Kamal Kharrazi, a senior adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"Yes, it's imminent. It depends on the political will of the United States," Mr Kharrazi told the conference.
Then-US president Donald Trump abandoned the pact in 2018, prompting Teheran to start violating its nuclear limits about a year later, and months of on-and-off talks to revive it paused in Vienna earlier
this month after Russia presented a new obstacle.
