German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has urged Iran to move quickly to resolve any remaining issues and reach an agreement to revive a 2015 deal on its nuclear program.
"What we would like to see is that an agreement is reached in Vienna," Scholz told reporters on March 2 after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem. "Now is the time to make a decision. This must not be postponed any longer and cannot be postponed any longer."
Iran signed the original deal with world powers the United States, Britain, France, German, Russia, and China.
But then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018, saying the terms weren’t sufficient to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that Tehran was financing terror in the region. Trump also reinstated crippling sanctions against Iran.
Several rounds of talks have been held in the Austrian capital over the past year to reach a new agreement.
On February 26, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Twitter that Tehran is "seriously reviewing a draft of a [new] agreement," while the country's chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, returned to Vienna late on February 27 for further talks.
Iran has steadfastly denied it is seeking nuclear weapons and rejects the claim that it supports terror.