Aljazeera:

Negotiators for Iran and the United States have concluded a fifth round of talks, as mediator Oman said there was some limited progress in negotiations aimed at resolving a decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“The fifth round of Iran-US talks have concluded today in Rome with some, but not conclusive, progress,” said Omani mediator Badr al-Busaidi after Friday’s meeting at the Omani embassy in Rome’s Camilluccia neighbourhood.

“We hope to clarify the remaining issues in the coming days,” he said after the high-level talks, which were led by Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Araghchi told Iranian state television that the talks had been “one of the most professional rounds of negotiations” so far, noting that, while an agreement had not been reached, the Iranian side was “not discouraged”.

“We firmly stated Iran’s position … The fact that we are now on a reasonable path, in my view, is itself a sign of progress,” Araghchi told Press TV.

“The proposals and solutions will be reviewed in respective capitals … and the next round of talks will be scheduled accordingly.”

Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier that chief US negotiator Steve Witkoff had left the negotiations early “due to his flight schedule”, but that they had continued in a “sane and calm atmosphere”.

The ongoing talks seek a new deal in which Iran would be prevented from producing nuclear weapons while having international sanctions eased.

However, little progress has been made so far, and both Washington and Tehran have taken a tough stance in public in recent days, particularly regarding Iran’s enrichment of uranium.

Witkoff has said Iran cannot be allowed to carry out any enrichment.

Tehran, which has raised its enrichment to about 60 percent, well above civilian needs but below the 90 percent needed for weaponisation, has rejected that “red line”.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the demand “excessive and outrageous“, warning that the ongoing talks are unlikely to yield results.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that Washington is working to reach an agreement that would allow Iran to have a civil nuclear energy programme, but not enrich uranium, while admitting that achieving such a deal “will not be easy”.

On Thursday, the Department of State announced new sanctions on Iran’s construction sector.

“Figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science,” Araghchi said on social media on Friday morning. “Zero nuclear weapons = we DO have a deal. Zero enrichment = we do NOT have a deal. Time to decide.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran took aim at the new sanctions, calling the move “vicious, illegal, and inhumane”.

Reporting from Rome, Al Jazeera’s Milena Veselinovic said uranium enrichment was not the only “stumbling block” in the talks. The US delegation had also wanted to broach the subject of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, which the Iranian side has insisted was a “completely separate issue to the nuclear programme”, she said.

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