Joe Biden
Joe BidenReuters

US President Joe Biden said on Friday he believed that Iran is approaching the talks on resuming compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal seriously.

“But how serious and what they’re prepared to do is a different story. We’re still talking,” he told reporters, according to The Associated Press.

The comments came as world powers held a fourth round of high-level talks aimed at bringing the United States back into the nuclear deal with Iran.

Russian delegate Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted following Friday's meeting that “the participants agreed on the need to intensify the process.”

“The delegations seem to be ready to stay in Vienna as long as necessary to achieve the goal,” he wrote, according to AP.

Iran’s delegate to the talks, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, told Iranian state television after the meeting that his impression was that all sides were committed to finding a solution.

“The reports that are being conveyed to us from Americans is that they are also serious about returning to JCPOA. So far, they have announced that they are ready to lift most of their sanctions, but we do not think it is enough,” Araghchi said.

“That is why the negotiations will continue until we reach all our demands in this regard," he added. "If our demands are met, Iran will be quite serious about returning to its obligations in the full implementation of JCPOA.”

Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal in response to former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018.

It has continued to do so even as Biden has indicated a desire to return to the deal.

On Thursday, CNN reported that the Biden administration is weighing unfreezing $1 billion in Iranian funds that the country could use for humanitarian relief.

It is not clear whether the release of the funds would occur unilaterally, but one line of thought is that it could serve as a useful goodwill gesture to Tehran, said three people briefed on the internal deliberations.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)