VIENNA, 07 March 2022, (TON): Talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers were mired in uncertainty following Russia’s demands for a US guarantee that the sanctions it faces over the Ukraine conflict will not hurt its trade with Tehran.

Moscow threw the potential spanner in the works, just as months of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington in Vienna appeared to be headed for an agreement, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying the Western sanctions over Ukraine had become a stumbling block for the nuclear deal.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to dispel talk of such obstacles on Sunday when he said that the sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine had nothing to do with a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

Blinken said in an interview “these things are totally different and just are not, in any way, linked together. So I think that’s irrelevant.”

He added that a potential deal with Iran was close, but cautioned that a couple of very challenging remaining issues were unresolved.

Yet a senior Iranian official told Reuters earlier that Tehran was waiting for clarification from Moscow about the comments from Lavrov, who said Russia wanted a written US guarantee that Russia’s trade, investment and military-technical cooperation with Iran would not be hindered in any way by the sanctions.