US says will provide views to EU privately on Iran nuclear deal text

The United States will provide its views on the European Union's final draft to save a 2015 nuclear deal privately and directly to the bloc's High Representative Josep Borrell, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday.

Price, speaking at a daily press briefing, said that the only way to achieve a mutual return to the Iran nuclear deal was for Tehran to abandon "extraneous demands."

The 2015 pact seemed near revival in March. But 11 months of indirect talks between Tehran and the Biden administration in Vienna were thrown into disarray chiefly over Iran's insistence that Washington remove its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps from the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

Under the 2015 agreement, Iran curbed its disputed uranium enrichment programme, a possible pathway to nuclear weapons, in return for relief from US, EU and UN sanctions. Tehran says it wants nuclear power only for peaceful purposes.

(Reuters)