Ned Price
Ned PriceReuters

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Tuesday that Washington has a "Plan B" if a nuclear deal with Iran is not reached, AFP reported.

Price refused to say the talks with Iran had reached an impasse, but did say the United States had contingency plans if a deal could not be reached and Iran's alleged plans to develop nuclear weapons were not halted.

"The onus is on Tehran to make decisions that it might consider difficult," Price told reporters, according to AFP.

"In fact we are preparing equally for scenarios with and without a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA," he added, referring to the formal name of the 2015 deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

"We are still working through a number of difficult issues," Price said, while not confirming what the specific unagreed points were.

"We know that there has to be a great deal of urgency, and we know that now the onus is on Tehran to make decisions," he said.

Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal it signed with world powers, in response to former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018, but has held several rounds of indirect talks with the US on a return to the agreement.

Negotiations nearly reached completion earlier this month before Moscow demanded that its trade with Iran be exempted from Western sanctions over Ukraine, throwing the process into disarray. Negotiators have yet to reconvene in the Austrian capital.

On Monday, Price said that a deal to restore the 2015 deal is not imminent, but Washington is prepared to take "difficult decisions" to make it happen.

Last week, Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said that two issues remain with the US in paused negotiations to restore the 2015 deal.

"We had four issues as our red lines," but "two issues have almost been resolved," he said, adding that one of those two issues is “(an) economic guarantee". He did not elaborate on the second issue.

"If the American side fulfills our two remaining demands today, we will be ready to go to Vienna tomorrow," he stated.