VIENNA, 15 February 2022, (TON): Iran is in a hurry to strike a new nuclear accord as long as its national interests are protected, its foreign minister said “as Tehran and the United States resumed indirect talks on salvaging Tehran’s 2015 agreement with world powers.”

The talks, with European intermediaries shuttling between the two, have been held in Vienna since April amid growing Western fears about Tehran’s accelerating nuclear advances, seen by Western powers as irreversible unless a deal is struck soon.

The 2015 deal limited Iran’s enrichment of uranium to make it harder for Tehran to develop material for nuclear weapons, in return for a lifting of international sanctions against Tehran.

But it has eroded since 2018 when then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States and reimposed far-reaching sanctions on Iran.

The Islamic Republic has since breached the deal’s limits and gone well beyond, rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.