Iran: According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Iran has the technical capability to build a nuclear bomb but has no desire to do so. Mohamed Eslami is the head of the country's Atomic Energy Organization.

Eslami echoed remarks made in July by Kamal Kharazi, a top adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Kharazi's comments amounted to a rare acknowledgment that the Islamic Republic, which has long denied seeking nuclear weapons, might be interested.

Iran has the technical capability to build a nuclear warhead, as noted by Mr. Kharazi, but according to Eslami no such program is on the agenda.

Iran has already exceeded the 3.67 percent limit set by Tehran's now-broken 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which enriched uranium to fissile purity of up to 60%. Atomic bombs can be made from uranium that has been enriched to 90%.

Former US President Donald Trump in 2018 abandoned the nuclear deal, which allowed Iran to end its uranium enrichment program in exchange for relief from international economic sanctions.

According to the chief Iranian nuclear negotiator, Iran has responded to Josep Borrell's offer to salvage the nuclear deal and wants talks to end quickly.

Borrell claims to have proposed a new draft of the text of the agreement.

"It is likely that in the near future we can reach a conclusion about the timing of a new round of nuclear talks," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said. "After exchanging messages last week and reviewing proposed texts."
The general outline of a revived deal was essentially reached in March, after 11 months of indirect talks between the US administration in Tehran and US President Joe Biden's Vienna.

However, difficulties arose, including Tehran's demand for Washington to provide assurances that no US president would withdraw from the agreement in the same way that Trump did.

Since the nuclear deal is a political understanding and not a legally binding agreement, Biden is unable to make that promise.
Removal of US-imposed sanctions and designation of IRGC (Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran) as a terrorist organization are two other contentious issues.

Iran's President Ibrahim Raisi has called for the lifting of all sanctions imposed by the US after a unilateral withdrawal in 2018.

Tehran has repeatedly stressed that without the lifting of sanctions, the nuclear deal is useless for the country.

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