US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Friday that talks in Vienna were “not going well”. Speaking during an event at the Council on Foreign Relations, Sullivan said the US does not have a way to return to a deal in this regard. “We have communicated both through the Europeans and directly to Iran. Our view on their continued forward progress on the program are our alarm about it,” he said. “And I’m not going to say more publicly about what those precise messages are because I believe that Iran understands them, but don’t want to negotiate in public on them. “To your broader question on how’s it going, it’s not going well in the sense that we do not yet have a pathway back into the ЈСРОА. “ The Biden administration still sees no “pathway back” to a revived nuclear deal with Iran after the latest round of talks in Vienna even though world powers including Russia and China are unified, Sullivan said Friday. “It’s not going well in the sense that we do not yet have a pathway back” into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that former President Donald Trump quit in 2018, Sullivan told the Council on Foreign Relations. Restoring mutual compliance with the deal “has proven more difficult over the course of this year than we would have liked to see,” Sullivan added. The last few days, I think, have brought some progress at the bargaining table. But in the meantime, since we walked away from a deal that had fundamentally put a lid on Iran’s nuclear program, they have raced that program forward and getting that program back,” he said. “The return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA has proven more difficult over the course of this year than we would have liked to see and we are paying the wages of the disastrous decision to leave the deal back in 2018,” he said. “That being said, what is going well, is unity with our European partners, greater alignment with China and Russia. And I think an increasing recognition by Iran that it needs to come to the table in a seriously constructive way and that our patience is by no means unlimited. “I’m not going to circle a date on the calendar next week or next month. But I will say that, as they continue to move their program forward, it does imperil the fundamental viability of the JCPOA over time,” he concluded. Meanwhile, a senior official at the US Administration said the amount of time required for Iran to develop nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so is “really short, the situation is “alarming.” He did not offer an estimate of the amount of time it would take Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon if it renounced all international agreements restricting its nuclear program but said it was “unacceptably short”. — Agencies