On Monday, Iranian media reported that Qatar would host indirect talks between Iran and the US in the coming days as the European Union works to break a months-long impasse to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

On Monday, “Iran chose Qatar to host the talks because of Doha’s friendly relations with Tehran,” Mohammad Marandi, a media adviser to Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, told the ISNA news agency.

After 11 months of indirect talks with Tehran, President Joe Biden‘s administration in Vienna, the European Union, coordinating negotiations, invited foreign ministers representing parties to the deal to hammer out a deal that appears to be close to the March deal.

But talks have since been suspended, largely because of Tehran’s insistence that Washington removes its elite security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), from the US’s list of foreign terrorist groups.

EU foreign policy chief Jose P Borrell, who travelled to Iran last week, said on Saturday that indirect talks in the Gulf countries are expected to resume in the coming days to break the deadlock.

An Iranian official told Reuters that despite media reports that “the US envoy for Iran Robert Marley is expected to arrive in Doha on Monday and will meet with the Qatari foreign minister”, adding that Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Khani Talks will be held in Doha from 28 to 29 June”.

Last week, an Iranian official and a European official told Reuters that Iran had dropped the FTO’s request to lift sanctions on the IRGC, but two questions remained, including one on sanctions.

The 2015 nuclear deal-imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. Former US President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, reimposing tough economic sanctions on Tehran.

In response, Iran’s tactics violated the agreement’s nuclear limits, including limiting the purity of its refined uranium to 3.67% and limiting its stockpile of enriched uranium to 202.8 kg.