A senior US official has said that Iran has met all of its obligations under an interim nuclear agreement with the negotiating countries….reports Asian Lite News

“Iran has halted process on some aspects of its nuclear programme and has rolled it back in a certain way,” Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said.

Blinken had recently said that the P5+1 countries — the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany — are making efforts to reach a final deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme by June 30.

The deadline was agreed upon by the negotiators in November 2014 after their attempt to reach a comprehensive nuclear deal failed due to a huge divide in opinions about how to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity and how to lift sanctions that are crippling the Iranian economy.

However, Blinken warned that the deadline could be missed.

“The June 30 deadline is fast approaching, and we do not yet have a comprehensive agreement, and there remains a chance that we won’t get one,” he said.

Blinken said that a comprehensive nuclear agreement represents the best option now and it was a “fantasy” to believe that intensifying sanctions will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Some US lawmakers and Israel are among the fiercest critics of the talks with Iran, arguing a negotiated deal would not prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear bombs.

“There is simply no better option for preventing Iran from obtaining that material for a nuclear bomb than the current negotiation mechanism adopted by the P5+1 countries,” Blinken added.